The Monk Who Went to Ground

By Jack Lindley

Arthur Ffoulkes, semi-retired CIA agent gathering dust in London, gets a phone call. One of his old agents, a fierce old Hungarian émigré known as the Brigadier, rendered obsolete by the new methods and technologies of espionage, was shot dead in Lloyd’s Park in Croydon.

The CIA and MI-Group bring in Ffoulkes with one purpose ⸺ make it all go away. But the more he investigates, the more he determines that the Brigadier wasn’t the victim of a random crime or an angry husband, but was shot by a KGB hit team.

And that he was trying to bring to Ffoulkes evidence of... something. A proof, but of what?

As Ffoulkes interviews other partisans in the émigré underground, members of the intelligence community who knew the one-time leader of a half-dozen other anti-Communist groups, even the legendary Deborah Rusan, MI-6’s in-house Russian expert, it becomes clear to him that the Brigadier had come into possession of knowledge that the head of a powerful KGB department was going to disappear himself, with millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.

It's a race against time for Ffoulkes to put together the fragments of a dead man's life and bring to justice the Chief of Remote Surveillance Department ⸺ codenamed Capuchin ⸺ before he vanishes for good.

Trigger warnings:
- use of some terms which today are considered offensive, but for the period in which this work is set were not intended as such.

- some thoughts concerning suicide and death.

- although no one dies on the page, there are some descriptions of the appearances of deceased people which may be upsetting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Lindley
• Release date: Feb 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005524159

Jack Lindley

Jack Lindley has spent well over a decade living in Asia, where he taught at university, and many years traveling around Europe. He has written or edited for television programs in Seoul and Berlin, and for magazines in Tokyo. He currently resides in western Washington, where he pursues outdoor activities such as hiking and climbing, as well as writing. He is married, with two grown children.

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THE MONK WHO WENTTO GROUND

by Jack Lindley

Disributed by Smashwords

copyright 2022, all right reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Betrayal answers betrayal, the mask of love is answered by the disappearance of love.

― Albert Camus

PART ONE

The Hard Men

CHAPTER ONE

À Cannes

Bonjour, M. Valois, she said. Je vais.

Anne-Sophie Gaubert stepped lightly from the elevator and waved at the concierge as she headed out of the building’s lobby.

Madame Valois always wore black and always sat by the entrance, where she was forever knitting clothing for her grandchildren. Today, it appeared to be a one-piece for her youngest, who was a year old. Bonne journée madame, she said to her hands in an off-handed fashion, then she peered at Gaubert over the tops of her reading glasses. Allez-vous à la plage?

Anne-Sophie wore a white one-piece bathing suit under a light flowy kimono, a wide-brimmed straw hat, enormous black sunglasses, and leather sandals on her feet. A bag of woven straw depended from the crook of her right arm, containing a towel, a glass bottle filled with purified water, and a small bottle of suntanning lotion. Oui madame. Je pense que le Plage du Casino.

Plage du Casino was a public beach within walking distance of Gaubert’s apartment. Situated between La Plage du Majestic Beach Club and the end of Promenade Robert Favre le Bret, it was close to the Palais des Festivals and was the first on the La Croisette stretch. Besides sunbathing or swimming, there were a whole host of coffee shops, snack stalls and cafés on the beach side, and restaurants along the promenade.

Madame Valois bid her have an enjoyable time, and Gaubert stepped out.

Cannes as a town sloped up and away from the beach. By following gravity, you would eventually run into one.

Gaubert turned right on rue Hoche and walked at a calm, even pace. The woman who operated the corner boulangerie waved at her, and Gaubert nodded back with a smile. Then she turned down rue des Serbes and followed it toward the Hotel Barrière

She was strikingly pretty, tall and leggy, and blessed with a wide, busomy chest. She had come to Cannes two years before to pursue a career in film, in part because of that chest. And while not yet lucrative, she had had a few small parts in motion pictures. Notably, an American film crew making a European-set ‘beach blanket bingo’ movie had paid her to dance in the sand at Ile Sainte Marguerite in a bikini. She had also been a slave-girl extra in a Sandokan pirate movie and spoke a line of dialog with Steve Reeves ⸺ which sadly ended up on the cutting room floor.

She’d gone on several dates with one of the producers of the American bikini movie, and he’d told her, late at night, that she didn’t have much of a chance for a career. Pretty face with sharp Slavic features, great boobies, but she was too wide in the hips. And there was nothing you can do to fix it short of working only in costume dramas.

However, Gaubert remained committed to her career. She had given up her entire life, and everything that she knew, to come to France ⸺ Paris first, and then Cannes. The opinion of one man, no matter how knowledgeable he might be, wasn’t enough to dissuade her.

She passed under the shadows of the tall palms that dotted rue des Serbes, swinging her bag. Yes, her career wasn’t at the place where she wanted it ⸺ yet ⸺ but otherwise she had a good life. Her apartment on rue Hoche was spacious and far better than where she’d come from, she had money to spare, and she was her own woman.

Things were good.

Gaubert paused at an open stall at the corner where rue Notre Dame let into rue des Serbes. She looked at a bin of oranges from Valencia, offering a million-dollar smile to the grocer. Ceux-ci, s'il vous plaît.

The grocer selected several small oranges the way a billiard’s expert would collect balls, and dropped them into an open paper sack.

As he worked, Gaubert glanced around the street.

Frowned.

Two days before, leaving her apartment early in order to pick up a few things at the store, as she had stepped out of the sanctuary of her building and onto rue Hoche, she had spotted the hard men.

The sort of men who sit at headquarters listening to tapes of interrogations, and never speak a word. The sort of men that walk straight down a Moscow sidewalk and people clear out of the way. They looked as out of place on the street in Cannes as a rhinoceros would look out of place in the middle of the Louvre.

She had noted the hard men, but otherwise had not given it much of a thought. They appear sometimes. She always attributed them to the French security service. She figured they were keeping tabs on her, which amused her. ‘Two hulking intelligence operatives,’ she had thought, ‘just for me!’

But then, even on those occasions, where she thought it was French intelligence, they always looked like ⸺ well ⸺ French intelligence.

These men looked hard. Burly and hard.

Then yesterday, two had appeared.

She didn’t know if they were the same two, or a different two. They always seemed to come from the same mold, and have a similarity of features.

That day, Gaubert had ducked into the very first business that she came to, a café, and sat in the back. Coffee, a croissant, and by the time she left, the hard men were nowhere to be seen, and she wondered if it had all been in her imagination.

Now one was walking five meters behind her, and another was abreast of her across from the grocer, shaded by a low-hanging red-and-white awning that almost obscured him.

Almost, but not quite.

‘I am mad,’ she thought to herself, ‘I am not mad I am mad I am not mad.’

Gaubert dropped coins into the grocer’s hands and continued toward where rue des Serbes ended at boulevard de la Croissette. Now not smiling.

The street seemed so empty now. And devoid of traffic.

The man who was five meters back was drawing closer. The man who had been across from the grocer was crossing the street to join him.

She told herself that boulevard de la Croissette would be safe. Crowded. Cars. Policemen. There was always a policeman or two at the Hotel Barrière.

The street widened and palms ran down a median strip. She had reached the backmost corner of the hotel.

Ahead of her, the street opened wide onto a broad boulevard and, beyond it, the Mediterranean.

She was almost there.

Gaubert crossed, braving cars and traffic, hopping over the meridian and into the lee of the Hotel Barrière.

She kept her eyes not on the cars, but on the plate glass windows of the hotel.

The two hard men were also hopping over the median, paralleling her movements. It would have been comical under any other circumstances.

The corner of rue des Serbes and boulevard de la Croissette was just ahead of her. She looked at the Empire-inspired architecture above her.

No BAC, no police, but it was crowded. A group of American tourists in a herd, following a shepherd waving a flag. Families waiting to cross the street. A German couple on honeymoon.

Gaubert hurried toward the tour group.

What happened next happened in a flash.

One minute she was upright, hurrying across the pavement, and the next, in a flurry of lights and wailing horns, she was laid on an operating table surrounded by surgeons in white masks. Or in Heaven, before the Almighty, mumbling excuses about a life that should have been spent better. She wasn’t sure which.

What happened had the slowness of an underwater ballet.

One of the hard men drew alongside her, along the right, while at the same moment, the hard man who had crossed the road from the grocer’s came up on Gaubert’s left, walking not on the sidewalk, but in the gutter. Out of habit, Gaubert stared at her two unwished-for companions.

They said nothing, and their eyes were flat and dead.

Putain! she snapped at them, and lowered her arm and dropped the loop of her straw bag into her hand. Reste en arrière!

She had not expected a villain to either side of her, and she needed time to recover her balance.

Gaubert drew back her straw bag and swung it with all her strength at the man in the gutter.

The bag connected with his head and the bottle of water shattered. His head rocked sideways and he swore ⸺ she could not tell what language ⸺ and he crumpled to one knee. For a moment, it seemed that he had three eyes, the water cascading over a circular scar on his forehead just above his right eye.

One of the American tourists shouted a warning, but Gaubert didn’t hear.

Bordel de merde! Gaubert cursed and swung the bag that was now spraying water.

The second hard man blocked the swing with his forearm. The contact rocked through her arm like a hammer blow.

She didn’t realize there had been a third man until he threw his arms round both of hers.

Gaubert kicked off from the ground, but he gathered her up like a sack and lifted her clean off her feet. The straw bag slipped from her nerveless fingers, and looking down, she saw her sandals and her toes painted in bright red nail varnish. Her assailant's arms, now locked hard across her breasts, cinched tight as he heaved her up with a grunt of effort. She wondered whether her ribs would crack before she suffocated.

She lashed out a foot at the hard man from the gutter, but he snatched up her ankles in his arms. She writhed with all the strength that she could muster and slid down through the constricting arms enough that she could sink teeth into a bicep.

A couple of bystanders seemed as scared as she was.

The third hard man shouted something, again she didn’t know if it was French or German or Swahili or what, and the two men in concert stepped around and, in one motion, threw her.

She reeled through the air, a pirouette horizontal to the ground, and the truck swerved to avoid her, Gaubert thanked God and all His angels that the driver had seen her.

The front bumper caught her at the back of the shins, and she felt herself turn over, feet over head, and when she saw her feet again they were straight up in front of her and her bare thighs were parted as if for childbirth. She flew upwards and her kimono splayed out, and for a moment she thought it was over. Then she landed hard on the hood of the truck, bounced up, and then hit boulevard de la Croissette with everything at once ⸺ head, spine, elbows and knees, rolling like a sack of rags.

A profound silence but Gaubert didn’t think it was the world but rather her hearing that had somehow switched off. Her cheek pressed against the street, Gaubert could see the tires of cars in the opposite lane passing by, unaware that she had been thrown off the front of the truck and was now collapsed in the street. She tried to move but couldn’t, and was aware of voices and car doors slamming but didn’t hear them, she felt engines roaring, all of it fading away.

Don't touch her! someone shouted in English.

‘No, don't,’ she agreed.

Feet around her, shoes and heels and sneakers and sandals and bare ankles and painted toes, too close

She heard herself say, Pick me up. I'll be all right.

What did she say? a voice asked in French, and another one in English.

‘Why did I say that?’ she thought. Or did she only think it?

Nom de dieu, another voice said. A pair of woman's hands pulled a blanket over her.

Get the flics, she said, but she didn’t know if she spoke it or whispered it or thought it. Her body refused to move, although she didn’t try with any effort.

What did she say? a man’s voice demanded in English, while elsewhere, a furious argument in French started about what to do next.

Get an ambulance, Goddamnit! an American tourist shouted. For God’s sake!

‘Did anyone call the police?’ she wanted to ask, but she was too sleepy to bother, too little oxygen. The crash had knocked the air out of her, and she suspected that she looked like a bird with a broken wing, flapping helplessly on the ground. And a moment later, she was asleep.

Later, the doctors marveled at the amount of damage that she had sustained, which was zero.

She was badly scuffed along both of her forearms and shins, and bruised along the backs of her legs, on her forehead, both her chest and her back. And they hurt, by God but they hurt. Possible stress and damage to ligaments and tendons.

But no broken bones. Not even a cracked rib. Likely no concussion. No crushed organs. No nerve damage. No dislocations.

The police then had a few questions, none of which she could answer.

They, in turn, had no answers for her.

The attackers numbered two, three or four. Possibly five.

They were described as tall burly men, or burly but not so tall. Or Chinese. Blonde, brunette, black-haired, bald, balding, a ginger, or platinum white. They were clean-shaven other than for the mustaches and a goatee on one of them. They wore dark suits or dungarees, one in a denim jacket or not, one in a tee-shirt that was white and red stripes or solid blue, or black, or gray, or white. One wore a brown leather jacket, or a brown cloth jacket, or black, or no jacket at all.

The doctors wanted to keep her overnight, but Gaubert had no interest. She checked herself out and, limping in pain, made it to the street and got herself a taxi.

The cabbie asked for an address, but Gaubert told him to just drive. The driver didn’t care, and responded with a shrug. He pulled out of Centre Hôspitalier de Cannes and turned left onto Avenue des Broussailles and drove toward Hautes Vallergues. Gaubert pressed herself into the back seat of the taxi and tried not to think. She would tell the driver randomly to turn right at the next light, take this next left, now head toward les Jardins de Babylone. If she had more presence of mind, she would have checked behind to see whether or not they were being followed. She was fortunate ⸺ very fortunate ⸺ that she was not.

After a time, she began directing the taxi northwest toward la Croix des Gardes, and then south and east toward le Suquet ⸺ the Old Town.

The taxi deposited her at the base of le Suquet, where it butted up against le Vieux Port. It was best known to tourists for its climbing, winding cobbled lanes, its 11th-century watchtower, and its strip of tiny shops on rue Meynadier.

Gaubert made her way, painfully and slowly, like an old woman, up and through the twisty streets and lanes until she came to rue Saint-Antoine, with its constricted cobbled passage crowded with tall buildings to either side.

She found the building she wanted and, in pain and sweating, she pressed a buzzer with a small patch of paper marked ‘C. Berger.’

Quoi! a voice sounded from the tiny speaker.

C'est Anne-Sophie.

Quelle Anne-Sophie? the voice demanded.

Claudia, it’s me. Let me in.

The door buzzed open.

‘God,’ she mentally groaned to herself, ‘stairs.’ The building was four stories tall and Claudia Berger lived on the top floor. No elevator.

It took Gaubert forever and a day to climb them, and the heat captured inside that top floor reached levels found more often inside furnaces. But Claudia Berger left her door open, and stood in the frame waiting for her, a cigarette hanging from her lip.

Let me in, said Anne-Sophie, I need to sit down.

What happened to you?

Car crash, she said.

You look terrible.

Let me sit down.

Berger’s apartment was sparsely furnished and decorated, as befitting a semi-nomadic person who moved often. Gaubert allowed herself to fall onto a loveseat and raised both of her throbbing legs onto the small cigarette-scarred coffee table positioned before it.

Claudia sat in a chair, one leg draped over an arm, and worked at her cigarette. Somewhere, she had picked up an ashtray made of a large shell. So what happened?

Car hit me, Anne-Sophie clarified. I need two things.

Uh-huh, Claudia said with studied caution.

One, can I stay here a night or two?

Why ⸺

No questions, please. Just yes or no. Can I stay here?

Sure. I guess. Okay, yeah, sure.

And two. Your boyfriend.

Marko?

What?

Marko.

No. Gaubert closed her eyes, flustered. You were dating this Russian guy ⸺

Oh. Serge. Sure, he was ⸺ what, two boyfriends ago. I haven’t seen him in a year.

Gaubert nodded. You said he knew someone at one of those émigré groups.

She made a dismissive gesture. Those émigré groups are a disaster. He said that you should avoid them like the pest. Too many groups, and they squabble like children. No wonder the Russians defeated them.

But there was one that he liked, no? Wasn’t there one that he worked with?

Claudia Berger held Anne-Sophie’s gaze. You say you were hit by a car?

Look, Claudia, I don’t want to get into it.

You’re in it, whatever it is, Anne-Sophie. What’s going on?

I need help. And I think I need the help of an émigré group. Well, a certain one.

What do you think Serge did for them? Some kind of secret agent? No, he just relayed messages, that’s all.

That’s enough. She closed her eyes again and the exhaustion washed over her. I’m in trouble, Claudia, and I don’t know where to turn. So this is my first step.

If you’re turning to an old émigré group for help, you’re worse off than you can know.

Are you helping me or not?

I’m helping, I’m helping, she said. I don’t remember the group, but the leader was called the Brigadier.

The Brigadier?

Former military man, somewhere in the East. Benedek something. Benedek the Brigadier. Hungarian, former Soviet. Serge said he was an old devil, and a womanizer, but he has connections and knows how to keep his mouth shut.

Anne-Sophie kept her eyes closed, but she nodded. How do I get in touch with him?

This was a year ago, Anne-Sophie. And none of these old generals are immortal. And besides, Benedek who? We don’t even know his full name.

Can you contact Serge and ask him?

Sure. I can do that. Gimme a chance to down some wine first.

But Anne-Sophie had lowered her head to the arm of the loveseat and tucked up her legs, and had fallen asleep in that too-warm apartment.

Serge provided a London phone number that was disconnected and no address, but the Brigadier’s organization was called the League for a Free Hungary. A check in a London phone book found at the public library on rue des Michels provided them with a phone number for the League for a Free Hungary, as well as the Committee of Hungarian Patriots, the Society of the Veterans of the Hungarian Uprising, the Imre Nagy Society, the Hungarian People’s Liberation Front, and the Martyrs of Budapest.

They all shared the same post box.

That night, Claudia claimed that Serge swore the Brigadier would never change. Groups come and go, but he was their rock of Gibraltar, he was the sun around which they orbited.

That night, while Claudia slept, Anne-Sophie sat at the tiny dining table with several sheets of paper and wrote to the Brigadier with a frankness which few people reserve for strangers. Thinking about which method was best, she started at the present ⸺ the two or three or four hard men throwing her into the street in the hopes that a truck would squash her ⸺ and worked backwards. She detailed her arrival in Cannes from Paris, her arrival in Paris from Germany, her roundabout journey to Germany, and her life before then.

She had a feeling of being denied a natural explanation of her life, even if it were a painful one.

She specified that any communication should be addressed to her at the American Express offices located on rue la Croisette in Cannes. She knew that she could check it with a degree of safety. She knew the hard men were still out there.

At the end of the letter, when she had written all that she could and all that she must, she signed it not Anne-Sophie Gaubert, the name on her passport and on all of her papers, but rather Yelena Nikoladze, the name on her first birth certificate.

She then sealed the letter in an envelope so that she would not read it and change her mind or, worse, throw it away. Then she stuck too many stamps on it as if afraid that otherwise it might not make it to London.

For the next two weeks following the posting of the letter, nothing happened.

Every other day, at different times, either she or Claudia Berger would visit the American Express office and ask for a message for Anne-Sophie.

In the back of her mind, she thought that silence was as good an answer as any. Perhaps the Brigadier was deceased. Perhaps he was not interested. Perhaps there was nothing to these émigré groups like Serge said.

She stayed with Claudia for two nights, then moved into a cheap hotel where she remained for two nights before changing to another one. She paid cash and used a false name.

On the fifth day, her agent contacted her. A producer wanted to meet and discuss a role. It sounded good.

Too good.

She politely declined, to his amazement.

She stayed in rather than going out to the beach or to clubs. She ate at odd hours, walking in different directions. She wore sunglasses and a large hat whenever she could. She became philosophical about this turn in her life. She tried not to cry, and most nights she was successful.

She started attending churches again, the first time in years. Any church that was open. St. Michael the Archangel Church, with its beautiful Art Nouveau architecture, the stodgy Anglican Church of St George, the old church at Le Suquet, the hilltop Gothic Église Notre-Dame d'Espérance, even the Protestant church on rue Notre Dame.

The letter came on the fifteenth day.

It bore no stamp or postmark.

She stared at it dumbly on the counter, then collected it and scurried out of the American Express.

The envelope contained a postcard of Piccadilly Circus torn raggedly in half, and a single sheet of paper with a message on it, unsigned and handwritten in a stilted French. It read:

Madame,

Your letter arrived safely. A member of our cause will call upon you at a location at a time of your choosing. Leave a message at the same American Express for ‘Herbert Jones.’

My man is a man of honor and has my absolute confidence. He will identify himself by handing to you the other half of the enclosed postcard.

Speak to nobody concerning this matter until your meeting.

Trust him entirely, Madame. We shall do everything we can to assist you.

She returned to American Express and left a message for ‘Herbert Jones.’

St. Michael the Archangel Church at 1 p.m., third pew from the rear wall, extreme left.

It included a date two days out.

Two days later, she sat on the edge of the third pew in from the rear wall and was startled by the silence at which the man sat down next to her.

He was small in stature, with arched eyebrows and a grooved face and unruly hair that came down to a line just above his eyes. He wore a three-piece suit despite the heat outside, a little hobgoblin of a man wrapped in an air of operatic conspiracy, and laid a homburg between them while he leaned forward on the head of his cane and