Beyond the Silver Sea

By Dick Donaldson

How far would you go for love? For revenge? For money?

A killer who lurks in the foggy streets of post-war London, a grieving father with justice on his mind and a man with the ultimate plan to cheat death. Just some of the stories that wait beyond the silver sea.

17 thrilling tales where love, faith and hope face off against anger, vengeance and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326239053

Book preview

Beyond the Silver Sea

Beyond the Silver Sea

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by Richard Donaldson

Cover photograph and design. Copyright © 2015 by Richard Donaldson

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2015

ISBN: 978-1-326-23905-3

www.beyondthesilversea.com

Dedication

To my friends, who have believed and supported me for so long;

To Kathryn, who brings colour to my world.

London Particular

Adams was a Particular sort of man. Not the sort of particular that required him to obsessively measure and trim his nails and beard (although he did), but the kind of man who loved the dingy, yellow glow of a London Particular. The Particulars were fogs; pea-soupers formed of soot and smog and sometimes genuine fog that drifted up from the Thames or the ghosts of streams that once fed it. Those fogs lasted for days, swallowing whole neighbourhoods until the sun finally broke through.

Adams relished the anonymity of the Particular, the way in which all men became equal and identities remained a mystery until the last moment. Friends, lovers and enemies passed each other in complete ignorance, shrouded by the all-encompassing gloom. Protected by the shadowy veil, Adams went about his business – his hobby really – without fear.

The method was faultless; Simple to execute and untraceable in the dark, post-War days, it worked over and over again. In that time of austerity, too many wandered the streets looking for work, following each other in the hope of finding gainful employment. A day, a week, anything to bring in just a little money. Rationing was still in place and even though there was talk of lifting it soon, talk was no guarantee and so men and women often spent their days looking for work. Children played in the grimy streets, often straying far from their own neighbourhoods in search of adventure and sometimes needing a helping hand to steer them home.

The Army had taught him to how to kill and when the War was over, they hadn’t told him how to stop. He'd tried to resist at first, but in the end he fell back on those habits that had become so natural to him. Adams didn’t care who he killed now; they all had their joys. Men were stronger so a quick kill was important, but women struggled more, increasing the thrill as they succumbed. Children moved faster, but died more easily. Deep in the fog you rarely knew what you were getting until your arm reached out and the knife flashed upwards.

The wireless had already reported a large number of fatalities during this Particular and Adams felt the familiar urge inside him. Some of those were his, he knew and the others…well, who knew? Who cared? Dressing warmly, he slid the switchblade into his pocket and stepped out into the dark. Within a few minutes he saw his new goal – an indistinct form no more than a dozen feet away, but shrouded in a yellow, greasy film.  The thrill grew, making his extremities tingle. 'Not yet,' he whispered.  'Not yet.'

As he followed his quarry, the excitement grew. A savage, almost sexual buzz built towards the ultimate climax. Adams had felt it many times, each time needing it a little more than the last and even now, a sadness was there that this feeling wouldn’t last as long as it used to.

The fog grew thicker and as Adams stepped up his soft pace to keep up, the figure stopped suddenly. It was time. The blade came out almost by itself and Adams caressed the switch to expose the cutting edge. Trembling now, he reached forward and…

Adams barely felt the arm reach around his own neck, and the slice of a blade against his own throat. A bare second remained for the realisation that he was the victim before blood loss from the jugular proved fatal. Behind him, the killer relaxed and slowly lowered the body, now no more than a dead weight, to the ground. A copious amount of blood had splattered a nearby wall, but the killer had done this before and avoided the inconvenient stains. Another victim of the Particulars, she thought, but then I am a Particular sort of woman.

Doorman

No one knew exactly how long he had been there. It was of those institutional things, like green walls and Victorian plumbing. Every morning he waved them in, tipping his hat to all and greeting those who had been there long enough to call him by his first name. In the evening, he repeated the process as the same workers left for the day. He knew everyone who worked there on sight and rarely asked anyone for their identification.

In truth, no one who spoke to him knew anything more than his first name. Bert was the only name he seemed to have, but everyone knew who he was - he was the doorman. Many supposed that his official title was doorman but the simple fact was that there was no official title for Bert. He came with the building, it seemed. He’d been there before many of the current workers and would be there until he retired, which wouldn’t be too far away.

As characters went, Bert fitted into the kindly old duffer mould. He was courteous to women and never failed to open a door for ‘a lady’ as he put it. Even when they were less than ladies, as some of the other security guards noted. To the gentlemen he was nothing short of polite and in other all respects, the perfect doorman, blending in with the facade on the aging Victorian building he protected.

Unfortunately, the building wasn't the only thing with a facade. Bert wasn't his real name. He'd been born Alexey Pavlovich Korolev and for most of his early life had worked for the KGB First Directorate as an intelligence operative, rising to the rank of colonel.

His original brief had called for him to infiltrate the security division of the British Ministry of Defence and from there assist the entry of further ‘illegals’ into MI5 and MI6 - the Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service as they were more correctly known. The sort of thing that had been going on for years, the section head had reassured the then middle-aged Colonel during the initial briefing.

Colonel Korolev had entered the UK with false papers...passport, he reminded himself as he stood in the green channel, waiting for the customs officials to finish searching his bag. There was nothing of interest in the luggage, the important package was the colonel himself. Secured in the UK, he found his assignment as a doorman at one of the defence establishments used by the security services and began to wait for promotion.

Without warning, at least to the rest of the Soviet Union, the communist states began to fall apart over the next few months. Since Korolev was supposed to be a sleeper agent, he had no route to contact his superiors who for the most part were fighting for their own lives. Within a year, the section head who had briefed and ‘run’ Korolev was dead, shot in a brutal KGB internal feud that the West remained blissfully ignorant of. Korolev’s file, like so many others like him, was lost in the mix-up as the USSR slowly dissolved into the Russian Federation and a dozen other states, battling for independence.

All that was well in the past and Korolev seldom thought about his past now. The condition which sets into many ‘deep-cover’ agents had started to affect him after a few years and he had begun to believe his cover story to be the truth. Psychological counselling at this point might have saved him, but Boris Yeltsin was still consolidating his power base and no one had time to devote to finding and restoring a lost son of the Rodina to health. Slowly, but irreversibly, Korolev’s personality became lost beneath that of ‘Bert the doorman’.

But the Motherland never gives up its own and eventually Korolev’s file turned up on the desk of an ambitious major in the new Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR. Smaller and less threatening than its predecessor, the SVR still handled a number of agents left over from the Cold War days - sleepers like Korolev and others in more sensitive areas.

Major Valerie Petrovich noted that the Korolev file hadn’t been updated for nearly 10 years and gained permission from his section head to reinitiate contact. Coded letters were the indicated method and such a communication was sent, via an asset codenamed HOTDOG in the North of England. 

Several weeks passed and there was no acknowledgment. A second letter, then a third, with increasing important code phrases, were sent. Still no reply. Petrovich was disturbed and eventually gained clearance for a physical meeting. It wasn’t usual procedure, but this man had been left on his own for 10 years and the major’s sense of decency demanded that an active intelligence officer should make the approach. 

Besides, the embassy had recently had 3 members of a diplomatic negotiating team declared Persona Non Grata by Her Majesty’s government for various reasons and the senior powers in the SVR wanted to prevent any more political incidents involving the Embassy staff.

'If anything goes wrong, we don’t know you.' was the curt response from the general responsible for Operations. 'You’ll be on your own. We can't do anything to help you anyway.' The major had nodded, whilst thinking that the old general was over-estimating the danger involved. It was just a simple trip to London to meet a missing colleague, then back to St Petersburg. No problems whatsoever.

Petrovich flew directly to Gatwick from the ancient Russian capital and took the Tube into the heart of London. There was no need to cover his trail in the same way there had been during the Cold War. Korolev had spent nearly 2 days making sure that he wasn’t followed. 3 hours was sufficient as far as Petrovich was concerned. 

The major had decided that the best time to try to contact the rogue colonel was at the end of the day. The address that had originally been assigned to Korolev had been demolished early in the 1990’s and the records had never been updated. All that Petrovich had was a picture, now years out of date, and a location for the office that Korolev was attached to. Not a lot, but then it was more than on some agents. A colleague of Petrovich’s had a missing infiltration team of 6 to find in the city of Hull, with nothing more than half a set of fingerprints for the light colonel leading it. Pure good luck and a case of fine vodka had kept that off Major Petrovich’s desk.

The major walked past the Victorian building twice that afternoon, careful to avoid paying too much attention to it, but using his training and peripheral vision, he was finally able to verify the colonel was still in place. It must be a good position, he thought and wondered what secrets the missing agent had been keeping, presumably unable to pass them back to his superiors. 

At 4.30pm office workers began to leave in a small trickle. By 5.15 the trickle had become a flood, but by 5.45 it was back down to a few drips, working late to brown-nose a superior no doubt. ‘Bert’ saw them all out, nodding to the senior security guards on the inside occasionally to confirm that all was well. Administratively, Bert was another member of their team as his wages came from the same drawing account as theirs, but in truth they regarded Bert as part of the building staff, like the cleaners, and not as part of the real security at all.

Petrovich made his move at 6.05pm when he judged correctly that most of the workers had left for the day. He strode around the corner and up the short driveway to the main entrance, where his target was stationed. The identification signals which were part of any agent’s basic training were designed for close-in work and as Petrovich grew closer to Korolev, his hands moved in the pattern for  Fellow officer.

Bert looked closely at the strange man who was approaching the building. There was something very familiar about the way he was moving his hands, but he couldn’t quite place it. Bert’s face broke into a puzzled frown as the signal was repeated and repeated again. His hands started to come together to make a signal, but he stopped. Why was he moving his hands? He should be asking this stranger for some identification...

'Stop there, please sir. Can I see some identification please?'

Petrovich froze. He had seen the partial reply - he had also seen Korolev stop making it. The worst fear an operative can have, dealing with an agent that had gone native, swept through him. The isolation had got to the colonel after all, he thought, and the only alternative was to leave now.

'Sir. Please stop. I shall have to call security.' Bert was suspicious of this stranger for some reason. Something wasn’t right about him. He looked foreign as well.

'Er ... sorry. I think I made a wrong turn. I’ll just head out the way I came.' Petrovich turned to leave the area, already thinking about how he would evade a potential tail.