The Whispering Dead by David Mark

Author:David Mark [Mark, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

CORDELIA

The rain started once I got past Leeds. It went from a few little splashes to monsoon season inside a few seconds. It was already black as ink beyond the glass and with the sheets of water cascading down it felt like I was driving through the middle of a broken TV. It was all static and flashing lights, my foot hard to the floor and only glimpsing the rear of the cars in front at the very last moment. I had my window down to relieve some of the steam on the inside of the glass so the car was filled with gusts of cold wind and little flurries of tooth-sharp rain. I kept going. Kept yanking at the wheel and sticking my head out of the side window, wincing into the distance to try and glimpse any obstacle before it was too late to avoid.

I’d picked the right vehicle, that was clear. Nobody was going to go to much trouble to get a maroon-coloured Allegro back so I was unlikely to be seeing any police roadblocks any time soon. It was as dispiriting a vehicle inside as out: patchy grey seats and a dashboard held on with sticky tape. Whether it had left the British Leyland factory in that condition or if the owner had done it himself was anybody’s guess.

I’d calmed down a little after the initial adrenaline rush. It was well short of serenity but there was a certain kind of pragmatic numbness sloshing about in my head. It all felt a little too big to take in and I was absolutely conscious of the gaps in my knowledge. As such, I couldn’t expect to think my way to a conclusion. I simply didn’t know enough. All I could do was run through the little that I did know and try looking at it from different angles. I’d always been good at puzzles and I’ve lost count of the people who’ve told me that I’m too clever for my own good, so I took comfort in the knowledge that I was well suited to the task of working out what was going on and then what to do about it.

I broke it down into a few key pieces, writing down names on a little white pad inside my mind and then taking a virtual photograph of the page. I put the heading ‘Walt’ and underlined it with a black fountain pen in my imagination. Then I started writing.

Walter Renwick. Recruited at Cambridge, ’47. Key postings at Moscow Centre, Middle East. Damascus station chief. Time at GCHQ then back to the Service. Indiscreet critic of colonialism and capitalism. Seen as a Red sympathizer by many. Questioned hard in the wake of Philby et al. Cleared but moved sideways. Reduced interaction with Control. Given responsibility for South and Central Americas. Operation Prickly Heat, information sharing with US. Parts ways with Service in ’76. Teaching, travelling, possible private contracting work. Dec ’82, contacts former protégée, CH, offering information on war crimes taking place in Guatemala.

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