The Logan File Read online

  A prey to mounting terror, Hedge left his office suite and went down for his car. By now, it was the early hours.

  That night he slept no more than did Simon Shard. When sleep did come, it was filled with nightmares about the Old Bailey, a bewigged judge making references to a highly-placed civil servant betraying the nation’s trust, and then the horrible clang of a prison door.

  *

  Procrastination was perhaps the thing, a display of masterly inactivity. For now, anyway. Christmas was not far away … nothing ever did get done over Christmas, everyone knew that, even villains. Christmas was all around Hedge: Mrs Millington had already decorated the house with expensive red-berried holly from Harrods, and — perhaps hopefully — mistletoe, plus a collection of tinselly stuff of various colours, little glittering red, green and blue balls and whatnot. A hideous bauble dangled over Hedge’s mostly uneaten breakfast. Driving to the FO, Christmas was again evident, canned music playing ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’, depictions over the shops of Father Christmas driving his wretched sleigh along with more music, ‘Sleigh bells in the snow’.

  And snow fell: Christmas again. Hedge did not feel Christmassy. In his office, he rang down for Detective Chief Superintendent Shard. He had, he said, arrived at a decision: he would report formally to the Head of Security, telling him that the matter, the word from Bonn, was in hand.

  “That’s all?” Shard asked.

  “Yes, Shard, it is.”

  “And Bonn?”

  “Bonn?”

  “Where the report came from,” Shard said wearily.

  “Yes, yes. Bonn.” Hedge frowned, tried to conceal the nervous twitch of his lips. “I don’t think there’s any hurry, Shard. Not over the holiday, you know.”

  “The message was urgent. From Bonn.”

  “From Security, in Bonn?”

  “Yes, Hedge.”

  “Not from the Ambassador?”

  “Not from the Ambassador, no, but —”

  “Then I don’t believe there is much urgency. We don’t want to be a nuisance, Shard, upsetting —”

  “Christmas?”

  “Yes, exactly. A time of — of happiness and —”

  “Peace and goodwill?”

  “Yes, that’s it, Shard. That’s it precisely —”

  “And in the meantime, Logan gets across to East Germany and possibly, eventually, to Moscow?”

  Hedge shifted irritably. “There is glasnost, Shard. Things have changed very considerably. I don’t think we fear Russia any more. Why, there’s religious freedom … they even, as I understand it, celebrate Christmas. They enjoy themselves.”

  Shard’s face was hard. “You’re gabbling, Hedge. With respect, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “Oh, really? I call that sheer impertinence and —”

  “Look, Hedge. That message from Bonn was clear, distinct and quite obviously urgent. You can’t just sit back over Christmas and pretend it didn’t come. You’ll have to inform H of S fully — and soonest possible. I don’t see why you haven’t done that already. Bonn will be bellyaching any minute now —”

  “Bellyaching! Really, Shard, I do wish you’d keep your Scotland Yard expressions out of my hearing.” Hedge pushed at various items on his desk, his fingers shaking. What a confounded nuisance Shard could be at times, always so pushing and would-be dictatorial, often treating him as no better than a village idiot. “In any case, what do you expect me to do about it, may I ask?”

  “Instruct Bonn immediately to have Logan apprehended. Isn’t that what your kidnappers wanted — to say nothing of what should be your duty, Hedge?” Shard paused. “I have to ask, what more is there behind this?”

  Hedge blustered. “What the devil do you mean by that, Shard?”

  “What I say. I get the impression you’ve not come entirely clean. That you’re hiding something.”

  “Really, I —”

  “And if that’s the case, then I suggest you come out with it before you drop in too deep.”

  “I am hiding nothing,” Hedge snapped. He drummed his fingers on his desk. “Oh, very well then. I’ll report to H of S that action’s being taken on the Bonn message. And tell Bonn I’ll be in touch when I’ve heard from H of S — who of course may feel the need to refer the whole matter to the assistant under-secretary.”

  “More delay,” Shard said.

  “It would be the usual procedure, Shard.”

  Shard left Hedge to it. When he was alone, Hedge, with an obvious reluctance, took up his security line to the country home of the Head of Security. When told that H of S was not currently at home, Hedge gave a metaphorical sigh of relief. Surely, if Logan reached East Germany before he could physically be prevented from so doing, those ruffians could scarcely lay any blame upon himself?

  Hedge tried to turn his mind to other matters.

  *

  Hedge’s ‘other matters’, mostly a load of departmental details, were interrupted.

  Shard again.

  “Yes, what is it, Shard?”

  “Further word from Bonn,” Shard said.

  “Oh, dear —”

  “Logan. He’s gone.”

  Hedge’s jaw dropped. “Gone? What d’you mean, gone? Is he —”

  “Flown, Hedge. He’s now inside East Germany. Last seen in Magdeburg —”

  “What a time to choose,” Hedge said dispiritedly. “It’s Christmas.”

  “Very unfortunate,” Shard said. “What are you going to do about it, Hedge?”

  “I’ll try H of S again.”

  Hedge did so; H of S was still not at home. The matter now began to assume urgent proportions of a personal nature. Hedge hummed and ha’ed, shooed his secretary off the line when she rang, something about a memorandum that was overdue and was being chased by the Cabinet Office. Should he now act on his own initiative and refer the Bonn report to the assistant under-secretary, or should he sit on it a little longer, waiting for the Head of Security to return from wherever he had gone? It really was a problem. He was still dithering when his outside line rang. He answered it. He was expecting Mrs Millington to ring; she had a sick sister-in-law, widowed, and she had hinted at breakfast that she might have to leave Hedge to his own devices that night and possibly over the festive season, as she called it, as well. She would let him know as soon as possible.

  It was not Mrs Millington.

  “Hedge,” the voice said. It was not the woman this time; Hedge recognised the voice of the kidnapping house-owner of the previous night. “By now, you’ll know what’s happened. About Logan.”

  Hedge shook, his face whitened, but he said nothing. “Are you hearing me, Hedge?”

  He nodded into the telephone. “Yes …”

  “Get your skates on, Hedge. If you don’t, you know what happens.”

  In desperation, Hedge found his voice. “It’s not up to me, as I tried to tell you last night. Interpol —”

  “Blarney, Hedge. You know that as well as I do. Get moving, or you’re for the chop.”

  The call was cut. Hedge trembled; he hadn’t done what he should have done, got his secretary to alert Shard and have the call tapped. He had a button on his desk for precisely that purpose, a signal to his secretary that she would have understood and acted upon instantly. He had been so upset, too shaken to react. Shard would be blistering about that. He decided to say nothing yet to Shard. Instead, suddenly making up his mind, he rang his secretary and told her to pass to the assistant under-secretary that he wished humbly to have audience of him. Five minutes later the assistant under-secretary was on the line himself.

  Hedge sat to attention before the telephone. “Hedge here, Under-Secretary. I do apologise —”

  “I haven’t the time to see you personally, Hedge, though I fully intended sending for you later. There’s been a report from Bonn about a man called Logan — are you with me?”

  “Er — yes, yes, Under-Secretary, I —”

  “It’s a very serious matter. I s
hould have been informed immediately and I shall want your explanation as to why I was not. Logan is not on any account to be allowed to remain in East Germany, much less to enter the Soviet Union, but the extraction is to be done with the fullest discretion. It’s vital that … certain past matters do not become known to the Kremlin.”

  Hedge tried his best. “But glasnost, Under-Secretary —”

  “Bugger glasnost. When these past matters of security arose there was no glasnost, only Siberia and mental wards. And the Russians aren’t basically all that far removed from those days even now, even with glasnost and what’s the other thing —”

  “Perestroika, Under-Secretary.”

  “Yes. I suggest you get that man of yours — Shard, isn’t it — into the field as fast as possible with orders to bring Logan out.”

  “Yes, Under-Secretary,” Hedge said with a sinking heart. The wish of an assistant under-secretary, like that of the captain of a ship, was a command. The same principle applied to a suggestion. Shard had now to be faced. So had his own future.

  *

  Shard had been mentally prepared for orders to go out into the field. Unlike Hedge, his function was basically that of a field man, not that of a polisher of office chairs. He’d known that a pierhead jump would become inevitable as soon as Hedge overcame his curious reluctance to refer the matter to higher authority. Logan would never be left to the mercies of the Eastern Bloc. To Shard it was clear that Logan/Schreuder had not gone into East Germany of his own free will. He would not be easy to extract from determined captors. Shard had spent the morning reading up about Logan’s past so far as it was known. Some of his war-time chicanery had been directed against Russia, the iron-hard Russia of Comrade Stalin. Russian memories were long, and Russia was still Russia whoever ruled it at any particular time. And revenge was still sweet. In Shard’s view Logan could well be left to be dealt with by the Soviets, despatched to a well-deserved death, but of course that was not the way in which governments, or government departments anyway, worked.

  The orders from Hedge, now that they had come, were for immediate action. Shard, who always kept a packed grip in his office, rang Beth.

  “I don’t know how long,” he said. “But just don’t worry about me if I don’t contact.”

  Beth, as ever, kept her voice level but Shard could sense the disappointment. “Damn the FO,” she said. “It’s Christmas.”

  “I know, darling. Try to explain to Stephen. I’ll make it up another time.” He risked a query about Mrs Micklem. “Your mother, Beth. Will she stay on?”

  “You bet she will,” Beth said. She herself found that too much of her mother became something of a trial; Mrs Micklem was a perennial giver of unasked advice, especially about little Stephen. But Beth would cope; she always did. She’d married a copper with her eyes open, had known all about the periods, some of them lengthy, of grass widowhood.

  Shard checked his grip and rang down for a car to take him to Heathrow and a BA flight to Hanover, where the villains’ video as observed by Hedge had shown the thick back of Logan.

  3

  There was the usual Christmas-time crush and bustle at Heathrow but the Foreign Office on duty bound could not be denied and Shard had been fitted in aboard a flight for Hanover without any overt difficulty. Waiting in the VIP lounge, and then during the short flight to Hanover, Shard reflected on Logan and his likely value to the Kremlin. It must in fact be virtually nil; the war had been a long time over. Logan’s secrets wouldn’t be worth a kick in the backside now; it had to be the revenge motive.

  Or had it?

  Logan wouldn’t be all that big a fish to the Russians. Hedge had gone on about glasnost, and certainly glasnost was now a fact of life to be considered in any dealings with the Kremlin. The Russian leadership, the new leadership, would surely not be wanting to rake up the long dead past, to exacerbate the West unnecessarily?

  Maybe it wasn’t the Russians who wanted Logan, but if not them, then who?

  On another tack, another line of thought, had Logan still a value in Whitehall, other than the negative value of not being allowed to open his mouth in the East? He had been presumed dead for so very many years now; his sudden re-emergence would probably have put a few cats among the pigeons. Shard, by training a policeman, tended to be cynical about not only the Foreign Office but about all government departments. Whitehall was a strange place at times, so were its denizens, and they tended to present a united front, closing in around their own when there was difficulty. Except, of course, when the knives were out in internecine warfare and somebody might see a chance of kicking somebody else in the teeth.

  That might or might not apply in the case of Logan.

  And Hedge?

  Shard still believed Hedge had not told him all he should have told him.

  *

  Shard had contacts in Hanover and on arrival he took a taxi to a house on the southern outskirts. A servant answered his ring. Frau Palmer, she said, was in. Who should she say was asking for her?

  “Just an old friend,” Shard said. “An old friend of her husband.” He spoke in German. The servant said she would convey the message and he must wait.

  He waited just inside the hall. After a minute a middle-aged woman came out. Her eyes lit up when she saw him and she came forward with outstretched arms. “Simon,” she said, smiling. “It has been a long time — I am glad to see you, so glad.”

  He bent and kissed her. Frau Palmer dismissed the servant and led the way into a drawing-room. An old friend of Shard’s, Detective Chief Inspector Neil Palmer of Scotland Yard, had married Trudi Strobel when he had been on secondment to Interpol in Bonn. Within two years of their marriage he had been gunned down by terrorists — the Bader-Meinhoff gang. Trudi Strobel had been a civilian worker in Interpol; she had carried on her work after marriage. She had never been to England and after widowhood she had still carried on her work. Now, as Shard knew, she freelanced under cover for Interpol, an adviser on terrorism and security. It was an unusual appointment; Trudi Palmer was an unusual woman; and still very attractive.

  Shard was offered a glass of wine; he accepted. Rung for, the servant came back with a bottle of Reisling. Shard and Trudi Palmer talked of old times, asking how each had made out in the intervening years. It was very obvious that Trudi missed Neil Palmer a great deal. She would never, she said vehemently, remarry.

  “But it is not for this that you have come, Simon.”

  He acknowledged it. “No. I believe perhaps you can help me.”

  “This is — official?”

  “It’s official duty,” he said. “But I’m here unofficially. You know what my work is now, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m here on a mission that has to remain under cover. There’s a man who’s wanted back in Britain.”

  “Yes? And this man’s name?”

  “Heinrich Helmut Schreuder, alias Logan. Francis Edward Moncrieff Logan. He was born in Potsdam in 1910. And I see from your expression, Trudi, that you don’t know of him.”

  “No,” she said. “I do not. Can you tell me any more, Simon?”

  He said, “He was dead but is no longer — he was believed dead —”

  “But he is after all alive.”

  “Yes. And has been observed here in Hanover. At the airport, getting into a car.”

  “When was this, Simon?”

  He shrugged; Hedge hadn’t known that. “I don’t know. But I’d guess recently.”

  “And after that?”

  “He crossed into East Germany, route and destination — final destination — not known. But he was seen yesterday in Magdeburg.”

  The woman frowned. “You say, Simon, his final destination. Do you mean Russia, Moscow perhaps?”

  “Yes. That’s on the cards. If that’s where he’s bound, well, he has to be intercepted.” He paused. “You’ve heard nothing of him at all?”

  “No, I have not. Tell me, Simon, is this man a terrorist?”
>
  “Not so far as is known. This doesn’t concern such outfits as Bader-Meinhoff, the IRA and so on — nothing like that. And you’re going to say that your work’s terrorism pure and simple. So you wouldn’t necessarily know.”

  “Yes, that is right, I am sorry to say — I am sorry not to be of help.” She wrinkled her nose attractively. “However, there is perhaps some little help I can give. I have a contact in Magdeburg, an East German who can be fully trusted and I shall give you his address. And in the meantime I shall see what I can find out about this Logan, or Schreuder, and I shall pass the information to my good friend in Magdeburg.”

  “It’ll be a great help, Trudi. Thank you.”

  She smiled and gave him her hand. “It is nothing. For old times’ sake, as you say. You were a good friend to Neil. So often he spoke of you.”

  *

  Hedge had gone home in a fractious mood. Desperately worried about his situation vis-à-vis the wretched Logan, he was now also faced with domestic upset. Mrs Millington had rung — and so upset by this time was Hedge that he had had a tap put on her call before he’d answered, which had made him look a fool — she had rung to say that her sister-in-law was very poorly, had taken a turn for the worse in fact, and she would have to go to her aid. Blood, she had said, was thicker than water, and although Hedge would have disputed any blood relationship with a sister-in-law he had been forced to accept her dictum. He found it a trifle thick, coming as it did over Christmas.

  Hedge, these days, was a bachelor of a sort. His wife had walked out on him, taking with her the furniture that was hers, having it loaded clandestinely into a pantechnicon while he was slaving away in the Foreign Office. A couple of years later she had died, which he thought served her right. Mrs Millington, who had not been in the least surprised when the mistress had done her flit, now looked after Hedge totally. Except, it seemed, when her sister-in-law called.

  During the day, after Shard’s departure into the field, Hedge had had a check put on anyone called Todd with two ds and Tod with one d. There had been quite a number of Todds and a couple of Tods but none of them had fitted in the remotest degree and Hedge had felt baulked, terribly frustrated. Tod had obviously been some sort of nickname only, as Shard had said. Hedge was also chagrined about F 39 UCK. That had made him look a fool too. But of course he hadn’t got Shard’s mind, the mind of a common policeman, the sort of mind that saw dirt in everything.