Spymaster: The Woman Below

By Bea Anthony

"A light hearted and easy read, looking at the behind the scenes action in the intelligence services. Thoroughly enjoyable and up to date subject matter."

Trying to force an old spy into retirement can be dangerous; especially if they never forget and keep a dossier on everyone. Miss Whyte had the manipulative and scheming cunning to execute her enemies in wartime, and those who know she still exists, suspect her counter-espionage activities have not dulled her fervour to remove in a permanent manner any who oppose her. Catching spies is her job. Her job is her life. No job, no life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katie Books Canada
• Release date: May 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780978456559

Book preview

The Woman Below

By

Bea Anthony

A Katie Books Publication

Copyright 2010 by Bea Anthony

Copyright 2016 by Bruce Anthony

ISBN 9780978456559

Republished by Katie Books 2016

IS098QW8B © inmagine.com/ImageSource

RBV0150400 © inmagine.com/Rubberball

U13217128 © Unlisted Images/Fotosearch.com

Cover Design © 2010, 2016 Katie Books Canada

For Bruce's Friends

Blackie, Poky, Duke, Kasper, Kemper,

Katie, Charly, Tinker,Chester, Clayton,

Rusty, Sandy, Patches, and Goldie

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

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S P Y M A S T E R

Book 1

The Woman Below

By Bea Anthony

Every once in a while, when a particularly secret file is closed, the head of intelligence sends it for safekeeping to the depository of catalogued files located in the basement of the east wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The east wing is the original solid stone building constructed to house the many treasures given by the poorer peoples of the world, in their attempts to bribe government officials for undeserved favours. After the treasures were liquidated to help pay for several intervening wars, the basement was used to store anything no longer needed or wanted.

The Depository of Catalogued Files is the sole office left in the basement. It is reached by a small unmarked door at the extreme end of a dimly lit marble corridor. Visitors foolish enough to venture undirected into the corridor seldom reach the door, choosing instead to retrace the lingering echoes of their footsteps to seek refuge in the company of the attendant at the information desk in the foyer. Persistent and determined visitors turn the handle of the door, and if it opens, descend the dusty and rickety stairs to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs is a seldom cleaned, small empty area painted a uniform grey with another unmarked door sporting a well-worn brass handle. The handle seems a useless appendage as the door remains locked despite the direction it is turned. Many unsuspecting visitors rotate the handle in one direction, then the other, and thinking the door is sealed, since it has no apparent lock or keyhole, climb back up the worn staircase and make their way back to the foyer to ask directions.

The few people familiar with the door keep turning the handle back and forth until for whatever secret reason it was designed, the door opens. Once through the door, visitors emerge into a lime green, cell-like area opposite a counter. The counter is shielded above by a thick glass partition with a metal drawer at counter level to pass documents through to the room behind. At a height very inconvenient to speak through, and small enough to make it impossible to pass a hand through, a hole in the glass allows muffled communications between the entry and room behind. The single decoration breaking the monotony of the lime green walls is a dark green scrollwork panel beneath the counter. To the left of the windowed counter, at the end of the entry space, is another door. Flat and bare without a handle, it has the solid appearance of a safe. There are no chairs or other furnishings.

Visible through the counter window is a comfortable sitting room with an easy chair, a floor lamp behind it, and on the far side of the chair a small side table peeking above the right arm. The wall behind the chair is covered floor to ceiling with closely spaced shelves holding hundreds of paperback novels. A small stack of books is visible on the side table apparently awaiting their turn with the elderly, and very tall woman, who habitually sits in the chair reading.

She holds a book in her left hand as she reads, keeping the pages open with her long thin thumb. Her other hand alternates between turning the pages and flicking the ash off a long black cheroot dangling from a corner of her mouth while a thin strand of smoke curls towards the ceiling.

This is Miss Whyte, Spymaster Emerita, the oldest and longest established employee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While not part of day-to-day operations, her extraordinary experience, knowledge, and insight have provided advice and guidance to successive Heads of the Intelligence Division. Forgotten by generations of active agents, she is fondly and fearfully remembered by senior members.

Miss Whyte, whose long forgotten first name is Gloria, admits to sixty-four summers—she is certainly much older—and a height of six foot five inches above the floor in flat heeled shoes. She has dyed red hair cut rather short and her gaze is magnified through saucer-sized eyeglasses making anyone conversing with her feel subjected to the examination of a microscope.

A much believed rumour alleges she received the job of overseeing the Depository because she was the sole person who could reach the top shelves without a ladder, at a time when the purchase of a ladder was outside annual budgetary constraints.

Miss Whyte is the true repository of secrets in the Ministry. She has the dirt on and therefore the cooperation of every manager and executive who has ever had their name mentioned in any file, any time in their career, in any department of the government.

There is apparently no entrance into Miss Whyte’s inner sanctum except through the blank door at the left end of the entry space. Since this door is locked from the inside, some employees assume she must live there, but old-timers know she keeps a small apartment a few blocks away and enters the Ministry by the garage entry at the back of the building early every morning, including holidays.

Her intellect is hewn to a fine edge by years of consuming detective, mystery, and spy novels, evidenced by the wall of paperbacks, and by the never openly acknowledged heroic activities of her youth, where her operations behind enemy lines during wartime were made more hazardous by her very difficult to disguise height.

One summer when she was very young, she was successfully romanced by a basketball player when she discovered she could kiss him without bending over. At summer’s end they parted sadly when Miss Whyte entered college, and he found a job with a professional basketball league in America.

A year later she was invited into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to fulfil a requirement for a woman who could entice a rather short General, who had fantasies concerning statuesque women, to part with some rather important military information.

Miss Whyte served with distinction in the following war, a peaceful interlude, and the war after, before accepting a permanent position in the Records Section of the Intelligence Division.

The extraordinary high security clearance she possessed, and her equally high level of intelligence, allowed Miss Whyte while in the records section, to expose several deeply buried spies in several different government offices, who after the wars found they had more allegiance to former allies, and a couple of enemies, than to their own government. The exposure of these spies led to her appointment as Head of the newly commissioned Depository of Catalogued Files.

She said the Depository was the reward she wanted in return for her years of service, where at her leisure she could monitor government activities, and enjoy the pleasure of sleuthing out internal spies. To cover her activity, the Depository was made the repository of especially classified files, and the place where files with too few secrets to keep were incinerated.

To span the periods when her suspicions were at rest, Miss Whyte loved to read mystery, detective, and of course spy novels because she thought the authors of these books possessed keen and inventive minds, and believed such books often provided real spymasters with new twists to their old business. She thought people in the spy game were not especially clever. Their skills were more in line with despicable, deviant, lying, cheats. Herself excepted.

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The Depository was to outward appearances the dead letter office of departmental files, and many files were indeed destroyed in the rotating incinerator housed within. Over the years, outside observers discerned when files were delivered, smoke emerged from a small chimney at the top of the old building, and had long ago decided the purpose of the Depository was waste disposal of classified material. Observers were still interested in these files, but placed little importance on them if the government thought them fit for burning. Good secrets are kept forever.

The real purpose of the Depository was of course safeguarding very secret files not trusted to electronic storage however good the encryption, or physical storage less secure than the 100 foot wide and twenty foot deep border of soft sand beneath the topsoil and grass surrounding the building; the four foot thick solid stone walls; and the six inch thick steel plate enclosing the most sensitive secrets. Highly classified files never left the depository once they entered, and future access to their contents was under the direct supervision of Miss Whyte.

The blank door to the left of the lime green entry cell could slide open at a touch of Miss Whyte's finger on a concealed button, revealing what was called the reading room. Here, a very select group of personnel could examine files if they had the correct authorization and security clearance.

The reading room contained a smaller counter on the right hand side with another sliding letter box drawer, but without a glass window. If Miss Whyte found the authorization presented in the entry area satisfactory, the door to the reading room would open, pause, and close silently behind the reader followed shortly thereafter by the letter box sliding forward revealing the requested file. Each file included an attached cover sheet warning the reader against taking, adding, or copying anything from the file, and requesting the full name, designation, title, employee number, and signature of the reader.

Other than a plain metal table bolted to the floor, and a high-backed, hard wooden chair, there was nothing in the room. Over the table a daylight-white lamp, flush with the ceiling, provided more than sufficient light to read by, and enough for the cameras hidden in each corner of the room to reveal every movement of the reader. When the reader was finished, the file folder and completed cover sheet were placed into the sliding letter box and pushed forward out of sight. Sometime later, if the contents of the file, the completed cover sheet, and a review of the camera recording was satisfactory, the blank entrance door would slide open allowing the reader to depart. More than one escaping reader remarked how easily the door out of the entry area opened from the inside, no matter which direction the brass handle was turned. Invariably, as the reader left he would see Miss Whyte again in her chair, reading and smoking, as if she had never moved.

The reading room was absolutely secure, bomb proof, and the sliding letter box contained devices to detect explosives. File recognition sensors locked the box in the reading room if there was an attempt to pass in, anything other than what was originally passed out from behind the wall.

The area behind the reading room wall was quite separate from the comfortable sitting room Miss Whyte occupied, and was connected to the real file storage area by a zigzagging corridor designed to deflect blasts issuing from the reading room's weak point, the sliding letter box.

Miss Whyte's sitting room wall with the counter and window, was as secure as the reading room, and could withstand bullets, grenades, and even bombs without disturbing her reading, except perhaps to cause her to lose her place for an instant.

The weak point into her solitude, the window with the sliding letter box and communications hole, was protected by locking the drawer open into the entry area, and by narrowing the hole in the thick window towards the sitting room, so even something as slim as a revolver barrel could not point at anything lower than the six foot five inch height of Miss White.

Concealed in the ceiling above the window, was an inch thick, solid steel plate with a carbide knife edge which would crash down if an attempt was made to force the letter box, or to pass light obstructing objects through the hole in the window without Miss Whyte standing at the counter with her foot on a switch overriding the operation of the steel plate, or in her chair touching one of the concealed buttons on the switch panel on the underside of the right chair arm.

Just visible from the window, in the extreme corner of the left wall of the sitting room, was an open doorway visitors mistakenly believed led to the sliding letter box in the reading room. It actually opened into another hallway running parallel to the blast hall, and led to a small kitchenette containing an exceptionally long daybed against one wall, and through a closed door an adjoining washroom located behind the sitting room for Miss Whyte's comfort.

Under the sitting room counter, within her field of view as she read, was a four image monitor showing the marble corridor leading to the upper door, the stairwell leading to the lower door, the vestibule outside the lower door, and an overhead view of the reading room from a camera hidden in the light fixture. Miss Whyte had full control of the upper, lower, and reading room doors from her chair, and depending on her mood, the intensity of the story she was reading, and her like or dislike of whoever wished to enter, would silently lock or unlock the doors as she saw fit, hence the difficulty visitors had with the brass handles on the entry doors.

Miss Whyte’s position, duties, responsibilities, and location suited her to her full satisfaction, and woe betide senior executives who wished to make changes.

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Government appointed Ministers knew little about the inner workings of the department because as elected officials, they were subject to quick replacement, and were given an actual security clearance of Confidential, the lowest classification, regardless of what they were told, or what it said on files presented to them.

 Knowledge of Miss Whyte’s true intelligence role and history was limited to the Deputy Minister, who as the senior civil servant, was allowed upon appointment to enter the reading room, and view a small file marked for Deputy’s Eyes Only. The file revealed among other things, Miss Whyte's true status. Miss Whyte would from Deputy to Deputy, add or remove information from the file concerning herself, and kept a close watch on anyone considered for, or in the Deputy’s position.

When Miss Whyte reached sixty-five, there was a concerted effort to force her into retirement, but inexplicably her personnel file disappeared, and she disputed the Government’s estimate of her age.

She stated publicly she still had a few years to go, while privately starting a rumour that fools who interfered with her would soon find themselves proven guilty of treason, and executed.

No one believed for an instant this was beyond her capability or an empty threat, and it was the delicate suggestion of an old retired intermediary who knew Miss Whyte in the old wartime days, which allowed Ministry and Government management to negotiate a compromise solution. Miss Whyte could continue in her present position if she had an assistant―of her choice of course―to ensure the continued smooth operation of the Depository in the unlikely event she should find retirement convenient, or necessary.

Along with a budget to hire an assistant, negotiations revealed Miss Whyte required considerable additional funding to make the changes she felt necessary to accommodate the Depository to the expanded activities she wished to provide with an assistant having the appropriate qualifications. Government managers objected because the additional funding would substantially increase budget estimates for intelligence activities over several subsequent years, but the same intermediary convinced them the expenditure was worthwhile, and if refused would certainly lead to the downfall of several crucial and indispensable government mandarins.

In the end, management believed it was simpler and more expedient to devote their efforts to increasing their overall share of the government fiscal pie, than to squabble over what was really an essential additional expenditure hidden beneath the security blanket of the Intelligence division, and spread over a number of years.

Immediately following management's capitulation, and much to their consternation, Miss Whyte closed the Depository and took up residence in the office of the Director of Human Resources. When that unfortunate functionary arrived and perceived Miss Whyte behind a large stack of personnel files on his desk, her obvious annoyance at his interruption was enough to send him scurrying to hide in a empty interview room two floors below, where he stayed until his own office was again vacant.

For the next three weeks, stacks of files arrived, and stacks departed, and slowly a drawer, unceremoniously emptied of its owners contents, accumulated a handful of personnel folders. Then late one night, Miss Whyte gathered up the folders, flicked off the light, and left.

Returning to the Depository the next morning, she went to work in the archive, cross referencing each of the folder names to every intelligence operation in the last fifty years. When she finished, Miss Whyte had found a prospective assistant: Miss Karen Black.

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2

Karen was employed in a different Ministry, but there was no doubt Miss Whyte's personal recommendation would expedite a request for transfer, and a greatly increased level of security clearance.

After another week of discussion with the Intelligence Division planners, Miss Whyte secured the Depository files in the steel vault, and left the premises in the hands of several specialists instructed to make her wishes come true.

While they were busy making changes, Miss Whyte managed to make Karen's acquaintance at a seminar where Karen had luckily found a place when the original invitee experienced an unexpected family emergency. With Miss Whyte acting uncharacteristically demure, and with her intimate knowledge of Karen's background, a friendship flourished.

 Karen became quite fond of the slightly strange, very tall, grandmotherly lady over the