‘Now hear this,’ CPO Ferguson said grimly, trying not to see the half-naked prostitutes in their black stockings and garters and precious little else, who thronged the main hall waiting for the sailors. ‘You’ve got an hour in this house o’shame – nae mair. You’ll all wear one of them French letters and ye’ll all wash that filthy – carefully – afterwards, ye ken what I’m talking about?’ he demanded.
Cheekily, Ginger Kerrigan quipped, ‘We ken an’ all and all, Chiefie. But do we really have to do it to numbers, one, two, three, one, two, three, Chiefie?’ He grinned wickedly.
‘Hold ye blether, man,’ Ferguson snapped. ‘Ye’ve got yer orders. Now get on with the filthy business. I’m gonna post myself on yon chair and no one leaves without reporting to me. Get on with it!’
The sailors needed no urging. They burst ranks and hurried to the waiting girls, who were making obscene gestures with their tongues as if they simply couldn’t wait for the excited young Englishmen to take them.
Grumpily Ferguson took up his seat, back ramrod-straight as he sat there, glowering at the madam in her black silk as she crouched behind her cash register, busily engaged in doing her sums with a pencil and a scrap of paper.
Ferguson had frequented brothels all over the world. ‘White, black, yeller and mixed, I’ve had ’em all,’ he had once boasted to his shipmates in the petty officers’ mess in the old days. Now he considered himself too old. ‘At fifty,’ he had confided in another old petty officer, ‘it’s not dignified for a chief petty officer to be seen in one o’ yon places. The ratings lose respect for a CPO if they see him in such a place, rollicking and spending his bawbees on loose women.’
So it was that Chief Petty Officer Ferguson, who had suppressed all carnal thoughts since he had got drunk after the Battle of Jutland and had found himself in bed with a Hull housewife, whose husband had gone down with the Black Prince during the battle, felt a surprising stirring of his loins. He looked down and the bulge in his dark blue trousers confirmed it. ‘Good God,’ he muttered to himself, ‘yon thing’s a-moving.’
The cause of this earth-shaking movement was a lithe dark creature in see-through pyjamas, her brown body naked from the waist upwards, revealing splendid little breasts, the nipples of which had been painted a bright carmine-red. And she was looking invitingly directly at the old sea-salt, sucking her middle finger with all the innocence of a depraved nine-year-old.
She seemed to slither across to Ferguson under the watchful gaze of the black-clad madam, who was probably already working out what it would cost for her to pleasure the ancient Rosbif. Now an agog, slightly panting Ferguson could see that she wore nothing below the transparent harem trousers – and that her pubic hair had been shaved off. He had seen some things during his time at the China Station back at the turn of the century, but never anything like that.
‘Gavoritu-vi pa russki?… hable Espagnol… können Sie Deutsch… parla Italiano… Speak you English?’ she rattled off the question in the parrot-fashion of someone who had been used to doing it many times before, inserting her middle finger between her scarlet lips with a knowing look in every pause.
CPO Ferguson swallowed hard. As if from a long distance away, he heard himself say, ‘I’m a Scot, but I do speak English.’
Her dark face lit up, as if this were very important to know. ‘A Scot!’ she exclaimed. ‘Those are de English who wear de skirts—’
‘Kilts,’ he corrected her.
She didn’t seem to hear. She placed her hand on his crotch and breathed. ‘How I want you wear de skirt. I could put fingers under here and do ze naughty tings to you.’
Up above on the landing, Ginger, already naked to his underpants, chortled, ‘Put it in crutches, Chiefie, and bring it upstairs – smartish!’
Five minutes later CPO Ferguson was lying spreadeagled on a rickety bed protesting, ‘I’ve na done it for a long while, Miss,’ while Tanja, as she said she was called, ripped off his trousers to reveal the skinny white legs below and that monument to youth and enterprise which stood again after so many years of lying dormant.
‘Grossartig… magnifique… molto bene… tremendous,’ she cried, eyeing it as if it were the first time that she had ever seen one. ‘You naughty boy, hiding zat from Tanja all ze time.’ She pouted. ‘You give Tanja… if you love her. Tanja want him – now!’
So saying she squatted on top of the old Scot and before he knew what he was doing he was back to the joys of his youth, when young sailors used to declare fervently, ‘There’s three things that keep Jack Tar happy – baccy, booze and a bit o’ the other? He was getting a ‘bit of the other’ once again.
Afterwards, she lay in his arms, playing with the grey hairs on his skinny white chest, proclaiming that nobody had ‘loved me like this’ and ‘I am ze happiest girl in ze world’, which under normal circumstances, CPO Ferguson would have doubted very strongly. But these weren’t normal circumstances, not for him. A well-content CPO Ferguson was prepared at this moment to believe the dusky little whore’s most blatant and transparent lies.
‘Och,’ he said generously, ‘it’s no much to write home about. But ye ken I have been doing it a long time.’ He shook his head in fond self-admiration.
She said. ‘You are a wonderful sailorman. You have been many places.’
‘Ay, that I have, missie.’ He beamed. Her cunning little hand was beginning to slip down to his loins once more. Could he do it another time, he wondered. At his age!
‘Where you go now?’ she asked and stuck her tongue in his ear wetly, while her fingers clutched what they sought.
Ferguson felt his breath coming more quickly. By God, he told himself excitedly, he was really going to do it again! ‘Go?’ he echoed, hardly recognising his own voice. ‘We go… I mean,’ he corrected himself, ‘to Alexandria. That’s in Egypt… on the night’s tide.’
She burrowed her tongue even deeper in his ear, her hand moving very busily now so that he was already panting for breath, as if he were running a great race. ‘And from Egypt where then?’
‘What?’ he cried, skinny old body lathered in sweat, as his spine arched with the almost unbearable pleasure of it all.
‘Where do you go from Egypt, darling?’
‘To Turk—’ He could stand it no longer. Face crimson, mouth gaping open, to show his yellowing false teeth, CPO Ferguson cried, ‘I’m coming… Oh, God, I’m coming…’ And he was.
A moment later Ginger Kerrigan was hammering on the door, crying, ‘Come on, Chiefie, we’ve got to get back to the Swordfish. Or do you want me to come in there and give yer a hand like.’
An exhausted Ferguson felt like replying angrily, ‘No ye cheeky booger, I’ve had enough hand as it is.’ But he simply didn’t have the strength.
Thus it was that they led him back to the boat through the growing darkness, the air full of the exotic scents of Arabic food and spices, walking in silence, each man wrapped up in a cocoon of his own thoughts. With difficulty they bundled CPO Ferguson on board and he staggered straight off to his little cabin, stared at by Dickie Bird and Smith. Finally the former broke the heavy brooding silence as the men began to disperse, ‘I say, old chap, do you think our old Chiefie indulged? I mean, I thought he’d be too old for that kind of thing. After all he did sail with Nelson on the Victory, didn’t he?’
Together they burst out laughing. Then Smith pulled himself together and said, ‘We’ll allow them four hours’ sleep, Dickie. We sail at midnight. Tricky in a port like this in darkness, but wiser, don’t you think?’
‘Exactly. Now what about a couple of pink gins and then we can get a bit of shut-eye too.’
‘Well said, Dickie. Let’s do that.’ Together they went down below, watched as they did by yet another petty spy. But they did not know that. Two pink gins later, they were yawning their heads off and without too much further ado the two old friends stretched out on the leather couches which made up most of the furniture of the tiny wardroom and were fast asleep almost as soon as their heads touched the headrests…
A thousand miles away on the other side of the world, the lights still burned in the Cheka Headquarters in Petrograd’s Technical Institute. Clerks in Red uniform strode up and down the echoing corridors purposefully. Behind frosted-glass windows typewriters clattered and telephones rang. Down below in the cellars, fresh prisoners, reactionaries and White terrorists, for the most part, were being cross-examined to the accompaniment of slaps, kicks and blows from their interrogators’ rubber clubs. All was purposeful activity and the huddled masses still trawling the frozen, snow-bound streets of Petrograd, now called Leningrad, told themselves the Red swine were working overtime again. But as they trudged by the hard-faced sentries guarding the building, they raised their clenched fists and said hollowly, as was expected of them, ‘Mir boudit!’
‘Peace is coming, comrade,’ the guards echoed the latest slogan routinely.
Up in his office on the second floor, Aronson, tall, blond and muscular, waited impatiently. Marseilles had first alerted him to the Englishmen’s arrival four hours before. During that time he and his operatives had got their voluminous files and agents’ reports in a great hurry. By seven they had identified them. They were the same Englishmen whom they had failed to liquidate during the Russian-Polish War back in 1919 and one of them was, for certain, the swine who had sunk the Spartak at Kronstadt the year before.
He had then called in his chief-agent for the Asia Minor area. Achmet Khan, dark and hairy with flashing black eyes, posed as a Soviet citizen from the south of the USSR. He spoke Russian and several of the local southern dialects fluently. In fact, he was, as only Aronson knew, a British citizen, who had been educated at Oxford and there had been converted to the radical group of extremists devoted to freeing their native India from British rule by armed force.
In 1918 during one of his many trips abroad, which were used for recruiting agents, Aronson had won him over to the communist cause. He had been very useful in helping to foment anti-Government riots in London and among the British troops being sent to Russia to help the Whites fighting against the Reds. A year later Aronson had had him brought to Russia to take part in the campaign to create trouble in his native land and other parts of the British Empire in the Near East.
He had come in, raised his clenched fist and rattled off yet another of those obscure slogans the government in Moscow were always issuing, ‘All power to the people, comrade!’
Aronson had looked up from his desk and smiled coldly. ‘What power, comrade?’
Achmet Khan’s dark face lit up. ‘Yes, it is rather stupid, isn’t it?’
Aronson had indicated the bottle of vodka and the glasses on the desk and said, ‘Throw one of those down behind your collar stud and sit down.’
‘You know my religion forbids me to touch alcohol,’ Achmet Khan said. He poured himself a large glass, raised it, toasted Aronson with ‘Nastrovya’ and downed it in one pleasurable gulp. ‘Horoscho. That certainly drives out your damned Russian cold.’
Aronson liked the Indian. At least he wasn’t so scared and mealy-mouthed as most of his agents, frightened of their own shadows so that they didn’t dare say anything that might be thought of as anti-party or anti-Russian.
‘Well, Khan,’ he had commenced, trying not to hear the rattle of musketry as they shot another bunch of traitors in the snowbound courtyard behind the building, ‘those English I mentioned earlier have arrived in their boat in Marseilles. I am now awaiting news of their destination.’
‘I am sure it will be Turkey,’ the other man said, eyeing the bottle. ‘The British imperialists will want to stop this Turkish business if they can.’
‘Yes, do have another drink. Yes, I agree with you. Now we don’t want it stopped. We want to set the whole area aflame. It will serve our aims to have the British Empire in disarray.’
‘Mine, too,’ Achmet Khan said simply, pouring himself another large drink. ‘The British have carried the white man’s burden for too long. I, for one, am eager to relieve them of it at once.’ He smiled, showing a set of excellent white teeth.
‘I’m sure you are. Now, comrade, this is what we are going to do as soon as we know the Englishmen’s next port-of-call.’ Rapidly he outlined his plan, ending with ‘The codename for the operation is “Accident on the High Seas”. As soon as I give you it, you will go into action. And understand, comrade,’ he had leaned forwards and had looked at the other man with such penetrating force that Achmet Khan had felt a cold finger of fear trace its way down his spine, ‘you must not fail.’
Khan had hidden his fear well. He said very confidently, ‘I will not fail you, comrade.’
That had been two or so hours ago now. Impatiently Aronson waited for the next bit of information to be transmitted from Marseilles to the radio room deep in the cellars of the Cheka HQ. Finally it came in the shape of Ilona, who was his favourite messenger. Not only was she one of his current mistresses, but she was also his spy in the radio room.
Ilona, white-blonde with a splendid figure and exciting green eyes, thought he was some kind of reactionary, secretly plotting against the new Soviet state and she assisted him because she, too, was a reactionary, daughter of a Czarist admiral who had been shot by his own sailors back in 1918. And perhaps he was a reactionary of a kind, Aronson told himself, as she stood at attention in the doorway, message in her hand.
He loved ‘Holy Mother Russia’ fervently. In his lifetime Russia had been ruled by fools, even traitors: the German Empress besotted by that mad monk Rasputin, that weak-kneed liberal fool Kerensky and now this Mongol, Lenin, who had spent his life in exile, actively sabotaging their noble country. But Russia had survived them all in the past and it would survive Lenin, too, because there were men like him, who loved the black earth of Mother Russia and its ordinary people, drunken, ignorant and lazy as most of them were. Russia would survive because there were men like him, cunning but determined, who placed their country first and their private interests second: men who wanted no glory but only the welfare of Russia.
‘Read it, comrade,’ he commanded.
‘Da,da, tovarisch.’
She closed the door and relaxed. ‘Their destination is Alexandria,’ she said simply.
‘Thank you, Ilona.’ He clicked on the switch of the intercom. ‘Comrade Khan,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Alexandria – put plan “Accident on the High Seas” into operation at once,’ he ordered sternly.
He heard a sharp intake of breath at the other end, then Khan said, ‘I depart this night.’
‘Good luck, comrade.’ He switched off the intercom and looked at Ilona.
She knew immediately what he wanted. She turned and locked the door before slipping out of her skirt to reveal shapely thighs and the fact that she was wearing black silk knickers trimmed with real lace.
He affected surprise. ‘Don’t you know, comrade, that the new Soviet woman neither powders her face nor reddens her lips? Cotton is good enough for being next to her skin. Silk and lace are decadent and bourgeois.’
She laughed easily. ‘But then I’m a reactionary,’ she said and grinned naughtily. ‘Now will you come and help me to remove this decadent and bourgeois undergarment?’
Now it was his turn to laugh. He rose saying, ‘It would give me the greatest of pleasure…’