THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER - Book review

Tom Clancy’s debut thriller The Hunt for Red October was published in 1984 and surprisingly I’ve just got round to reading it 41 years later! It’s obvious why it became a best-seller – the amassed technical and logistic and intelligence detail reeks of authenticity.

This review will be short, since it’s likely that most readers here have seen the film starring Sean Connery (1990). The story covers eighteen days from December 3.

Soviet Captain Ramius is taking the new ballistic missile submarine Red October to sea for an tactical and equipment validation exercise. By page 6 it is clear that Ramius intends to kill the political officer Putin. From that moment the suspense builds and does not let up.

Both the US monitoring ships and the Soviets in the exercise area lose all trace of Red October.

CIA Analyst Jack Ryan gleans information which leads him to the incredible conclusion that the Red October is sailing towards North America to defect.

So begins a chase, involving the real USS Dallas, HMS Invincible, other US vessels and a number of Soviet craft. Open conflict is a real threat – by accident or by design. Geopolitics are involved; obviously, if it is known that the Red October is being held by the Americans, the USSR will demand its return by international law, since neither was at war.

The various personalities on October and Dallas are drawn very well. The politics are sketched out by the President, the head of CIA and others believably. All in all, the 477 pages flew by.

Secret file – 01 – Tana Standish, psychic spy

On November 26, The Prague Papers are released. This book is published by Crooked Cat. It is based on a manuscript handed to me by an MI6 agent, Alan Swann. It needed some knocking into shape, as it had been a collaborative effort by a select group of agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish, psychic spy, whose career spanned 1965 to 1988. They asked that her story be told as fiction.

As a result, the forthcoming novel The Prague Papers is the first adventure to feature Tana Standish and is mainly set in Czechoslovakia in 1975.

 

 

Certain information was divulged in order for me to write the book; yet some has been concealed to date. Certainly, her past and attributes are dealt with in more depth in the book. Here is a brief outline of information that I have gleaned so far.

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 was killed ironically in a car crash two years later. Her mother Vera never remarried.

At the time of this novel, she is thirty-eight.

She 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.

Besides possessing psychic abilities, she has a photographic memory.

Her hair is auburn, sometimes black and sometimes brunette. She has intelligent wide eyes with faint lines at the corners.  Eye-colour varies with the light – sometimes topaz, sometimes green or grey. Her nose is aquiline, her forehead high with two pronounced lines when concentrating. She has known grief but can still laugh, her mouth being sensuous; her chin is round and firm, perhaps ‘determined’, and she has high cheekbones.  Her voice is resonant or sensuous, dependent on the situation. She has kept herself fit and possesses strong muscular shoulders and arms and is generally well-toned.

 

 

The episode in Czechoslovakia is her eleventh mission since joining a special adjunct of MI6. I don’t know why this particular mission manuscript was the first to be chosen for me work on. I can only hope that details of her earlier missions will be conveyed to me at some future date.

The Singapore Signal – 1965

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 Mombassa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

Since my first meeting with Mr Swann, I have been entrusted with a further three manuscripts, pertaining to Iran, Afghanistan, and Argentina. The Tehran Text will be released in 17 February by Crooked Cat.

 

 

November release - The Prague Papers

Due out in November from Crooked Cat Publishing, the first psychic spy Tana Standish thriller, set in the Cold War, which Mr Putin seems intend on bringing back...

Czechoslovakia, 1975. Tana is a spy - and she’s psychic. Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, she was adopted by a British naval officer and his wife. Now she works for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Czechoslovakia’s people are still kicking against the Soviet invasion. Tana was called in to restore morale and repair the underground network. But there’s a traitor at work.

And she learns about a secret Soviet complex, concealed in a colliery in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret psychic establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia. As he gets to know her, his loyalties are strained.

With her old flame Laco, Tana infiltrates the Sumava complex. When she’s captured, a desperate mission is mounted to either get her out or to silence her - before she breaks under interrogation.

 

 

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.

 

 

Book review - Not with a whimper

 

The genesis of this recently published novel is not only unusual, it’s heart-warming. Author Pamela Kelt’s father was a writer, working away on his novels on a ‘clunky typewriter, only re-emerging at odd times, looking crumpled and unshaven’. She hadn’t read a word or even seen one of his manuscripts until some twenty years after his untimely death. When she read this manuscript, she became obsessed with getting it published, she felt it was so good. As both her father and she had overdosed on Ambler, Deighton, Le Carré, Chandler and Buchan, she knew a good story and character when she read it. Pamela sent it off with great trepidation to Crooked Cat Publishing… and it was accepted. This acceptance meant more to her than all of her own, I suspect; it was something really special.

If you’ve enjoyed Alistair Maclean, Eric Ambler, Raymond Chandler, Gavin Lyall, and Desmond Bagley, to name a few, then this novel is right up your street – or calle, since it’s set in Spain.

It’s the early 1970s, before the demise of Franco. The narrator, Alan Christian is a recalled British agent sent to discover the truth behind the death of another agent, Lynd, ostensibly a shooting accident. His descriptions are clipped, precise and raise a smile of admiration or even of humour: ‘… over roads with potholes you could have hidden a sniper in…’

Alan’s enquiries move from one eccentric or sinister character after another.  He is also threatened, and in turn threatens others. ‘I said that confidently. I was full of confidence. I oozed confidence. I dripped with it. That was the impression I was trying to create. I even considered whistling.’

 
In typical fashion, Alan gets knocked unconscious by ne’er-do-wells from time to time. And finds himself in strange places and predicaments: ‘I didn’t have to open my eyes to smell the room. You could have bottled that atmosphere and sold it as “instant peasant”.’
 
Of significance is the US naval base, Rota – which is now called Naval Station Rota, Spain. Apparently, the VLF-transmitter Guardamar, which uses Torreta de Guardamar, the tallest man-made structure in the EU as antenna that links Naval Station Rota. [I live close to Guardamar and we can see the antenna…]
 
There’s a conspiracy, and a hare-brained scheme to change the world. It seems that Alan’s meddling is liable to put a Spaniard in the works.

I enjoyed this character-driven thriller very much, not least since it concerned a familiar yet now altered Spain. Alan Christian is of the old school, a polite, honourable, tough, and stubborn man who liked to drink and smoke too much, but most of all cared about the world he lived in. His integrity shines through, despite his bone-breaking travails.

 
If you like your heroes to be world-weary with wit and compassion, then try this posthumous ‘original cold war thriller’.

A shorter version of this review will appear on Amazon et al.

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.

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

Recurrent images: beginnings and echoes

Using a leitmotif in your fiction can provide an added dimension. This is a recurrent idea or image. Indeed, there may be several different leitmotifs in the novel.

In my series of novels about Tana Standish, psychic spy of the Cold War, I begin each book with similar imagery. This serves a number of purposes – it thrusts the reader directly into the action and it reveals something about the characters involved, for example.

The first two books are out of print and seeking a new publisher; the third is a work in progress, with more to follow in time.

The Prague Papers - ONE: Prelude

Czechoslovakia, August, 1968

Six Soviet officers stood on the balcony overlooking St. Wenceslas Square and the definition through the sniper-scope was so good that Tana Standish could detect the black-heads round their noses and the blood-shot eyes that testified to late-night celebrating with alcohol. She had ten 7.5mm rounds, more than enough to kill all of them. 

            Tana had a steady grip but there was no risk of weapon-shake anyway as the new Giat F1 rifle rested on its bipod on the window-sill. She had also made sure that, as this weapon was fresh from the French production-line, it could not be traced back to England.            

            Dressed in his brown-grey greatcoat with bright red lapel flashes, General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky cocked his head to the left while he listened attentively to his commanders. He was thick-set, with small dark eyes and a pug nose whose nostrils bristled with hair.

            Try as she might, she could not detect any thoughts from the officers. But she was able to lip-read. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, since the invasion had gone well, with only a few Czech and Slovak deaths. Vodka had indeed flowed last night.

            As one of the main architects of the offensive, Pavlovsky would have the honour to die first. She levelled the cross-hairs on the general’s forehead, just between the close-set eyes.

            For God’s sake, don’t! Along with the words that she snatched from Laco’s tumbling thoughts came a familiar dull ache at the back of her neck. Her mouth went very dry. Tana lifted her finger away from the trigger and felt cold sweat start its trail down the side of her brow.

            She turned her head as, seconds later, Laco unlocked the apartment door and rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

            ‘Thank God I caught you in time!’ he gasped, eyes staring at the rifle on its stand.

            ‘We agreed,’ Tana said evenly, ‘if we got the opportunity, it was too good to pass up.’ Out of the corner of her eye she watched the Soviet officers. They weren’t going anywhere. Two of them were pointing down into the street, where a car was on fire.          

            Laco heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘We intercepted a radio message.’ He rested his back against the wall by the door and slowly sank down on his haunches, head in his hands. ‘They said there will be reprisals if we kill any of their officers.’

            ‘If I was one of the other ranks,’ she said, ‘I’d be a bit upset about that.’ But it wasn’t a joking matter. Reprisal was not a nice word in Czechoslovakia.

            She drew the lace curtain across the window, concealing the weapon.

            Kneeling beside Laco, Tana gently took his hands in hers. She understood. He was only nineteen and he didn’t want another Lidice on his conscience. ‘One day, we’ll beat them,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

FR1 rifle - Wikipedia commons

 

The Tehran Transcript – ONE: HEART

Friday, September 8, 1978

Iran
Dressed in his sinister black SAVAK uniform, Captain Hassan Mokhtarian looked every inch the evil man he was. A man who deserved to die.

            Tana Standish could see him quite clearly through the telescopic sight, even making allowances for the poor light as dusk descended over Tehran and the city’s surrounding mountains, turning the overshadowing snow-capped cone of Mount Damavand a delicate shade of mauve. At least today the city smog didn’t obscure the peak of the volcano which still belched out sulphurous fumes from time to time and killed the odd stray sheep.

            Hassan exuded an air of danger with his pitted complexion and deep-set ebony eyes under a prominent forehead ridge. While SAVAK was a civilian organisation, many of its officers were military men and they relished wearing a uniform which instilled fear in the population.

            Standing in the open doorway of his villa, he exhaled smoke through his nostrils and dropped the Marlboro cigarette to the lightly coloured marble-tiled step, grinding it under the toe of his boot. His eyes glinted, as if he took pleasure in the destruction of even small things.

Hassan smiled as he closed the door behind him and stepped down to the waiting limousine with its bullet-proof smoked-glass windows. The government driver opened the door.

            Going to fat, his black silk shirt taut against his stomach, Hassan paused, one shining boot in the vehicle, and glanced back at the window to the right of the entrance. His wife Rosa waved.

            He had excelled himself with the Koofteh Berenji. The balls of meat had been filled with barberries, walnuts and fried onions. They were delicious. Normally, Rosa arranged for the chief maid to buy their meat for the chef, but on this occasion he’d insisted they take from the freezer the most recent gift from headquarters.

            Rosa allowed his odd whim – it was about once a month, he supposed, that he dictated what they ate and actually cooked it himself. It just depended on the quality of the source. He joked that it made him stronger, more capable of doing the Shah’s work, and of course the chef got a day off into the bargain.

            Now he grinned broadly at the memory and he experienced a thrilling shiver down his spine. Hassan wondered what Rosa would say if she realised the ground meat they’d eaten was the heart of Savak Hoveyda, a particularly recalcitrant activist for “people’s rights”.

            He used his big nicotine-stained fingers to brush back the oiled hair from his forehead, gave Rosa a cursory wave and, abruptly, his heart lurched and his normally emotionless features contorted in distress, deep furrows appearing in his prominent forehead, and his eyes screwed tight as sudden intense pain assailed his hands. It was as if his fingernails were being pulled out by the same pincers his men had used on Hoveyda, the same he had planned to use tonight on the anonymous Mojahedin woman.

            Shaking violently, Hassan staggered back and fortunately his driver caught him before he could fall on the hard marble steps.

 

Tears streamed down Tana’s face and dampened the black cotton material of her chador as she watched Hassan Mokhtarian stumble backwards into his driver’s arms. The optical telescopic sight – the Mauser SP66 had no obscuring iron sights - provided her with a very detailed picture of her target’s sudden facial transformation.

            It wasn’t enough, though. It never would be, she thought, the familiar taste of iron in her dry mouth.

            Thought-transference was something quite alien to the self-satisfied torturer of the Shah’s Security and Intelligence Service, SAVAK. It pained her as much this time as it had when she’d received the psychic echoes from her friend Savak Hoveyda – so ironically did they give their security and intelligence service the acronym which was a common Persian name!

Mauser SP66 rifle - Wikipedia commons

The Khyber Code – ONE: HERAT

Wednesday, February 14, 1979
Afghanistan
Cross-hairs of the telescopic sight centred on the man’s creased forehead, just below his brown and grey woollen hat. Steadying the weapon, Clayton tried calming the anger and disgust that threshed in his body. He needed a quick, clean shot. Stop breathing, squeeze the trigger. Now!

            The stock of the Mannlicher-Carcano carbine thudded into his shoulder as the gun’s report bounced off the hills. The 6.5mm calibre bullet made a bloody mess of the man’s head, splattering blood over his long-sleeved astrakhan coat. A lifeless hand dropped the curved knife.

            As the echo of his shot died, Clayton levered the bolt, feeding another cartridge into the breech, and fired again.

 

Not too many minutes earlier, Clayton had been on foot, gingerly leading his horse down the rocky scree slope towards the village. Although it was cold, he wore tough hide sandals, as did all tribesmen in the mountains. His disguise required it, since he was liable to pray five times a day and that meant preceding his devotions with ablutions of cold water on the back of the neck and feet. Few devout Afghans could be bothered with lace-up boots, they took too long to remove. He wore chalwar kameez, a wool hat and a black leather patch over his left eye. His pattu was slung over his back.

            He was about an hour early to pick up young Sher, his helper and guide, who reckoned that he’d found a buried ancient minaret just two days’ ride away.

            He stopped, noticing a gathering of men and a young woman outside an adobe house on the edge of the village. Two horses were standing idle by a hitching rail. Further down the village street, people watched furtively from windows and doorways, heads hooded, only their eyes visible.

            Clayton lifted the false eye-patch to get a better view of the group. Their body language indicated that something was amiss.

            Old instinct kicked in. Withdrawing the rifle from its leather boot under his woollen saddle-cloth, he sat back on the slope and rested his elbow on his knee and studied the group through the telescopic sight.

            Sher was being restrained by two stocky villagers with bushy black beards. A young woman was being held by two more men. Her shawl had been pulled away and her big brown eyes stared fearfully at the tall bearded man in the astrakhan coat. Clayton recognised him – he was Sher’s father, Asad Sattar.

            Clayton was too far away to hear what was being said, but he could read Asad’s lips, translating from the tribe’s Pashtu language: ‘You bring shame to my house, Nura!’

            ‘No, father, it is not like that!’

            ‘I have been informed that you dare to gaze with lust on an unworthy man!’

            ‘No, it is Ramin, he is jealous, he wants me but I don’t want him!’

            ‘What you want is of no consequence! You dishonour me and all your family!’

            ‘No, father,’ Sher objected, ‘that is not true!’

            Asad cuffed his son with the back of his big hand. ‘Silence, boy, or I shall cut out your tongue!’ Asad turned back to his daughter. ‘For your transgression, I shall pluck your eyes out and cast you into the wilderness!’

            Asad moved shockingly fast, pulling his curved knife from its belt sheath and flicking its point at Nura’s left eye.

            Clayton’s stomach lurched as the girl screamed. Sher’s eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t cry out; like all young Afghan men, he was stoic in adversity for he had learned not to cry even if seriously hurt. Clayton steadied his arm and hands, aimed and shot Asad in the head. It was bad enough that anyone would do that to another human being, but for a father to be so brutal beggared belief. He knew all about the medieval practice of Islamic honour killings, but he’d never witnessed any; usually, they occurred behind closed doors. Girls as young as nine were sold or wed to old men and death while giving birth was commonplace.

            Trembling with after-shock, Clayton fired again. This second shot pierced the shoulder of the man on Nura’s left. His third shattered the kneecap of one of the men restraining Sher. Only seconds had elapsed and in that time the remaining men let go of the two youngsters and, helping their wounded comrades, turned and hurried towards the house. For an archaeologist, Clayton thought, he was a pretty good shot. The quality of the rifle helped, he supposed; nothing to brag about, the same type was used in the assassination of President Kennedy.

            Quick-wittedly, Sher spotted Clayton, waved briefly then ran over to his wailing sister who was crouched on the ground, hands covering her face. He grabbed her arm and tugged; reluctantly, she stood, covering one eye with a hand. They ran to the horses and Sher swung into the saddle and hauled his sister up behind him. In seconds, the pair was racing in Clayton’s direction, abandoning their home and village and family forever.

            Sher drew the horse beside Clayton; his sister hugged him tight, burying her face against Sher’s jacket.

            Clayton sheathed the rifle and swung into the saddle. ‘We must lose the pursuit, my friends,’ he shouted, pointing towards the village.

            Sher glanced over his shoulder, past the bowed head of his sobbing sister. Already, four horsemen were riding out of the village, furs flying out behind them, each brandishing long-barrelled jezails; sun glinted on the muskets’ elaborate lattices of mother-of-pearl.

            ‘Let’s go!’ Clayton said, urging his horse up the scree. An experienced young horseman, Sher followed, his sister clinging to him as if for dear life. Seven days from now, I had promised to be in Herat, Clayton fumed. Now, I may spend all that time eluding those damnable tribesmen!

            About an hour later, they entered a narrow defile and he halted his mount. ‘Sher, find me a place where I can transmit a message to Herat.’ His radio was concealed in several hollow sections of his saddle.

            The youngster nodded, his tone serious: ‘Yes, Greystock,’ using one of Clayton’s aliases. He signed for Clayton to follow him as he led his horse to the east.

Me at the gate (baab) to the Khyber Pass (1969)

***

Until I find a publisher for the series, I probably won’t finish Khyber (it’s one-third written already, however, and fully plotted).