The widows war, p.1
The Widow's War, page 1
THE WIDOW’S WAR
Alan Williams
For Antonia and Owen
Thinkers prepare the revolution; bandits carry it out.
— MARIANO AZUELA
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: A Quiet Place in the Country
CHAPTER 2: The Night Callers
CHAPTER 3: The Set-Up
CHAPTER 4: The Point of No Return
CHAPTER 5: The Island
CHAPTER 6: First Blood
CHAPTER 7: A Touch of Triumph
CHAPTER 8: The Widow Returns
CHAPTER 9: ’Twixt Cup and Lip
CHAPTER 10: Exit
ALSO BY ALAN WILLIAMS
CHAPTER 1: A Quiet Place in the Country
At precisely 5.57 p.m. by his grandfather’s gold watch, Hugh Dermot Ryan flicked the wall-switch that controlled the thermostat on his bath. It took just three minutes for the bath to fill. He undressed at leisure, folding his clothes over the Sheraton couch, before the radio switched on with the time-signal for the Six o’clock News.
He sank into the water and listened to the headlines. Something called Devolution had caused a mild disturbance and evoked a few clichés from a shadow minister: there was also trouble in Cyprus, the City, and an item about an island in the Caribbean that had recently dispatched a huge armed force to Central Africa, and where there were reports of riots, following the arrival of several troop-ships carrying the bodies of dead soldiers who had been fighting for the liberation of Black Africa.
Ryan listened to this with some interest. Things had changed since he had been stationed out there in the Island’s capital, Montecristo, as a double-agent in German uniform working for the British in World War II.
But Ryan was more concerned by a later item: a vague — and, to Ryan’s mind, ambiguous — reference to security measures round the Rushdale Experimental Research Centre near Oxford. This annoyed him because his own establishment relied largely on seclusion, and he was acutely conscious that while experiments in biological warfare might be necessary to the national good, he preferred them to be carried out more than fifteen miles from his own parish.
Ryan listened through the financial report, heard that the weather was continuing dull and cold, then stirred his big toe against the thermostat control below the automatic tap. He had already read all he wanted from the telex in his study. The Index was down again over four points, but this hardly worried him, since he spread his money shrewdly — and usually quite legally — while keeping his ‘grubstake’ in a reputable banking firm in Geneva.
He climbed out of the bath and wrapped himself in a towelling gown. He was a compact, strongly-built man, well into middle-age, but his muscles were still hard, his belly flat, his chest, arms, and legs flecked with greyish-blond hair.
As he entered his dressing-room, a valet in a white coat appeared and handed him his glass of Jack Daniels, without ice or water. Hugh Dermot Ryan drank slowly, steadily, allowing his body to dry of its own accord under the towelling wrap.
He had been born, sixty years ago, Hugh Dieter Ryan, in Ennis, County Clare, son of an Irish civil servant and a second-generation Austrian mother. Later, under a bizarre train of circumstances — some voluntary, others fortuitous — he had become Hans Dieter Reien, later Colonel Reien of the Waflen-SS, with special responsibilities to the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst in Central America. As far as anyone knew, he was the only man to have emerged from World War II with both the Iron Cross, First Class, and the DSO.
Ryan finished his drink and began to dress. His clothes were subdued and faultless. His fingers, which were strong and broad-tipped, were extraordinary in a single respect: they bore no fingerprints. These had been surgically, painfully erased at a German military hospital outside Arras, in the Spring of 1942, before he had been parachuted into Britain as an enemy agent.
His appearance was unremarkable. Apart from the grey at his temples, he looked younger than his age: his skin was smooth, his teeth in perfect condition, his eyes wide-spaced, almost colourless, a pair of pale stones. He was the kind of man who, in England, sometimes had trouble cashing a cheque, while on the Continent and in America he rarely found it necessary to reserve at even the most exclusive hotels and restaurants.
In 1947, following a traumatic incident at the Central Criminal Court of the Old Bailey, he had been offered a small fortune by a Sunday newspaper. He had declined — not out of any modesty, but because his memoirs would have constituted a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
From his childhood in Ireland, Ryan had graduated to the shifty, feckless, then largely-redundant activities of the IRA. But he had no time for politics. With his natural skills in the use of firearms and explosives, he had embarked upon a career in safe-breaking. He specialized in what he called ‘tin-opening jobs’, and, within twenty months, was one of the most wanted men in London.
By 1939 he had amassed a small fortune, mostly in heirlooms and melted-down family silver, and had discreetly taken up residence in France, just north of Boulogne. Here he was on nodding terms with P. G. Wodehouse and had a large farm and a lucrative criminal activity in French land deals. In the early summer the latter was exposed and Ryan was arrested. He was just starting his term of five years’ imprisonment when the Germans arrived. Since he spoke their language fluently, he was offered recruitment into the Waflen-SS.
He accepted. His options were not numerous. But he was a man who had learned to exploit the most improbable opportunities. His knowledge of German and his impressive personality, together with his skills as a criminal and a hit-and-run man, seemed to qualify him perfectly for service in the victorious armies of the Reich; and although he was not a snob in the social sense, he had always been an elitist. In the Waffen-SS he found his own level.
His first assignment was Paris. The war was going well for Germany, and also for young Major Dieter Reien. His duties were neither heavy nor dangerous. Food, champagne and girls were cheap and plentiful. He enjoyed preening himself in his dreaded black uniform in the smartest restaurants and cafés.
In the middle of June 1942, he was chosen to be dispatched on a hush-hush mission to England. He was to be dropped into Kent to stake out a top-secret factory which was manufacturing a new fighter-aircraft. His task was to pin-point the factory’s position and send out a radio-bleep to direct in a Luftwaffe air-strike.
Instead, he boarded a train for London and went straight to Scotland Yard. Here he was arrested and promptly charged on seventeen counts of breaking and entering. It was three days before he managed to get a message out to the War Office. Eventually someone informed the Cabinet of his presence.
From then on, to the fury of the Metropolitan Police, Ryan’s case became the special perquisite of Number Ten. Ryan was set free, and within seventy-two hours the aircraft factory outside Maidstone had been dismantled and reconstructed three miles away; while in its place stood a perfect copy of the original buildings, together with a mock-up prototype of the aircraft. At dusk Ryan made his way through the wire, and at a pre-arranged signal he switched on his high-frequency radio.
The damage was so accurate and extensive that German aerial photographs, taken next day, convinced the authorities in Berlin that the factory had been totally destroyed. The operation was equally successful for Ryan. He was granted a Free Pardon from all his crimes — suspended on the proviso that he committed no more — and was then invited, by the PM himself, to return to France.
Ryan agreed, but only on condition that the sum of 50,000 gold sovereigns be paid into a numbered Swiss bank account in his name. Although the Old Man assumed an air of outrage, he was privately tickled by Ryan’s effrontery: he agreed. Ryan was made to sign the Official Secrets Act, awarded the DSO, flown secretly to Lisbon, whence he made his way by boat to Malmo in Sweden. From there he reached the Third Reich, where he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, and later promoted to lieutenant-colonel.
After that, Hugh Dermot Ryan spent a comfortable war. He was sent as SS aide to the Abwehr in charge of the Caribbean theatre. Here he rose to the rank of full colonel, stayed at the plushest hotels, frequented the most exclusive clubs, while regularly supplying British and American Intelligence with detailed movements of U-Boats in the North Atlantic. At the same time, he became as fluent in Spanish as he was in German and English.
But sooner or later Ryan knew that his luck would run out: the Allies were winning, and he finally gave himself up to the British consulate in Caracas. He was repatriated to England, where he finished the war as a major in the Brigade of Guards. On being demobbed, he drew out some of his capital from Switzerland and bought a nice Tudor bungalow, complete with heated swimming-pool, on the South Coast.
The only thing he had failed to anticipate, as a civilian, was boredom. After a year in his redoubt near St Margaret’s Bay, he decided to try his hand at a few of his old skills. He selected the home of an elderly couple who were away for the weekend in Cannes. But just as he was leaving the house with a bag of valuables, he was apprehended by the local policeman who had spotted a light in the front-hall.
Ryan’s carelessness cost him two months on remand, before he was once again in the dock at the Old Bailey. His chief counsel advised him to plead guilty, and to ask for his other seventeen pre-war cases to be ‘taken into consideration’. The trial lasted one day, and the jury returned a unanimous verdict of ‘Guilty’. The judge reserved his judgement until the morning.
The next day, at 10.20 a.m., a small fat man was seen to be remonstrating with the offi cers at the door of the court. He eventually reached the judge and handed him an envelope. The judge opened it, turned purple, then rapped for silence. His address to the court was an odd one. His voice was sour: ‘The accused will go to prison for ten years.’
There was total silence. Ryan stood steady and quiet between the two policemen, watching the judge. His lordship’s next words came in a hurried whisper: ‘Sentence to be suspended. The court will rise.’
Knowledge of the letter, and the identity of its two authors, only reached Ryan a few days after his release. The letter had been signed by the former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and by the king.
Ryan, the pre-war Mayfair safe-breaker, now found himself to be both famous and fashionable in a drab post-war Britain.
He had capital and influential friends — or rather, contacts. For Ryan was one of those rare creatures who had never had any true friends. It was not that he was a withdrawn or cold man: just that beneath that deceptively relaxed, beguiling exterior was a restless spirit that craved uncertainty and excitement. The placid company of his fellows meant nothing to him, unless he could use them. In all his relationships — both male and female — he behaved with the emotionless self-gratification of a man enjoying a prostitute.
His first excursions into legitimate commerce were not altogether happy. He started by setting up a luxurious floating restaurant on the Thames, but soon found that in a world dominated by Sir Stafford Cripps and ration-books, the venture was doomed. He bought a quarter-share in a nightclub, which went broke within five weeks. (It was not Ryan’s fault that at the same time a fire destroyed the premises, thus enabling him to recoup most of his losses from the insurance company.) He had even, at one time, considered starting a prep school, with the emphasis on Outdoor Activities.
His final decision was an inspired one. The rule of life in Britain during those hard days was enshrined in the single word: austerity. Ryan calculated that if people wanted to be austere, they should pay for the privilege: he bought a country house in the Cotswolds and established an exclusive health farm. At first he catered for overweight men and fat plain ladies with varicose veins. For a couple of glasses of lemon or carrot juice a day, a sauna and the attentions of a short, elastic man who rubbed and slapped and pummelled them with his rubbery hands, Ryan was ensured a steady clientele, all of whom were prepared to pay, in order to be starved, at least five times the country’s average weekly wage.
In later years, Ryan shrewdly extended his scope. While still keeping within the law — as well as occasionally using it — he offered his establishment as a discreet place of recreation to the high and mighty: politicians, film stars, visiting Heads of State, the famous and the infamous, all could be certain of finding sanctuary and a little diversion at Ryan’s place, known as The Hermitage.
By 1977 Hugh Dermot Ryan was deriving from his various sources of income around £100,000 a year, and was paying derisory tax. Yet he was not a contented man. In his sixty-first year, he was still a bachelor and a lecher; he enjoyed good living, fast cars, a wide variety of women. But what he most wanted seemed no longer available. He yearned for the stimulating scent of danger — something that he was unlikely to sniff in the heart of the Cotswolds.
He finished his whisky and pressed a bell on the desk. His secretary and chief assistant, an unsmiling State Registered Nurse, appeared in the doorway.
‘Is he here, Miss McKinley?’
‘He arrived about ten minutes ago, sir.’
‘Tell him to wait. I’ll have another whisky.’
The man who was finally shown into Ryan’s leather-padded study had a reptilian stillness about him. He was dressed in dove-grey — a sharp narrow man with flat eyes and shiny black hair like a bathing-cap. His manner was arrogant, and he made the initial mistake of complaining that he had been kept waiting.
Ryan sipped his drink, deliberately not offering one to his visitor. ‘What do you want, Mr Sargas?’
‘Mr Ryan — I am not here on my own behalf. And you will accept, of course, that what I have to say to you is in the most absolute confidence.’
Ryan’s eyes lifted slowly from his whisky. ‘Mr Sargas, you represent the interests of my new client, Madame Achar. As for confidence, you know my reputation. And as to fees, you have no doubt seen my brochure? £250 a week — excluding such extras as hairdressing, facials, ultra-violet treatment, and so forth.’
The man’s eyes slid downward; he smiled and examined his fingernails. ‘Mr Ryan, my client has instructed me to offer you 2,000 American dollars a week — for six weeks, payable in advance.’ He put his hand into his jacket and drew out a plain buff packet the size of a small paperback. He let it drop down on the desk in front of Ryan, who looked at it without interest. ‘Do you not wish to count them, Mr Ryan?’
‘Mr Sargas, you are prepared to trust me — why should I not trust you? But since you are paying this amount, there must be special considerations. These I must know. It is a condition I always make. There are no exceptions.’
The man stiffened. ‘Mr Ryan, you are not perhaps suggesting that my client has done anything — illegal?’
‘I am not suggesting anything, Sargas. I just want the truth. Otherwise, you can start knocking on someone else’s door.’
‘My client has an alcohol problem.’
Ryan gave his visitor a bland stare. ‘You must know that I am not medically equipped to treat alcoholics here, Mr Sargas.’
‘Yes, I know that. That is why I am offering you 2,000 dollars a week. All my client requires is rest and privacy.’
Ryan sipped his whisky, then said in a silky voice: ‘Mr Sargas, please don’t fool around with me. I know exactly whom you represent and who your people are. Accept my conditions, and we will both remain satisfied men.’
There was a brief pause. ‘You know who I am?’ Sargas said.
‘You are banker and financial adviser to the widow of a notorious political gangster. I didn’t spend half the war knocking around the Caribbean for nothing, you know. Your dead boss might not yet have reached the top in those days, but we all knew his name.’
Sargas gave a cold smirk. ‘You called my client’s late husband “notorious”. Do you think him more notorious than the man who now runs my country?’
‘I’m not here to argue about Latin American politics, Mr Sargas. The subject is academic. We are discussing a purely business proposition.’
Ryan’s visitor sat contemplating the long-haired white rug, then straightened up. ‘I agree. My client will be admitted under your conditions.’
‘$3,000 a week for six weeks — in advance.’ Ryan finished his drink and grinned. ‘Take it or leave it, sonny boy. Neither I nor your client are beggars, so we’re both free to choose.’
Sargas stood up with some dignity. ‘My client can go elsewhere, Mr Ryan.’
‘Very well, let her go.’ Ryan waved his hand.
His visitor looked at him passively. Just as he was standing up to leave, Ryan laughed:
‘Sit down. If you haven’t got a sense of humour, at least have a sense of proportion. You and I know that it doesn’t matter a bugger — to you or your client — whether the fee is $2,000 a week, or $5,000. Either way, the woman can afford it. And I won’t insult you by calling you a pimp — because I’m a pimp myself. I just want the money in advance, in cash, and in return I’ll guarantee that your client is not disturbed. Above all, that nothing appears in the newspapers, or anywhere else.’
His visitor had paused by the door. ‘Mr Ryan, the lady is in a highly nervous state. She requires much care. Above all, she does not want to be bothered with questions. Any questions you have, you will put to me.’
Ryan rose and laid a hand gently on Sargas’s elbow, and guided him through the door. ‘It’s a pity, Mr Sargas, that you can’t get me some of those excellent cigars they make in your country. The green ones, I mean — not the ones they export.’
Sargas gave him a quick look, as though about to say something, then left with a nod. Miss McKinley showed him to the front door.
At his health farm, Ryan did not usually appear until during the eleven a.m. coffee-break. He would move among the tables and armchairs, patting a rinsed head here, a raddled brow there, or tweaking the parched cheek of some ageing matron whose bank account was in excellent condition, but whose body required skilful repairs.
