Gunfight At Bing’s, OK!

By Les Hooper

Playing pat-a-cake with faceless wonders of the spying game contains more pit-falls than free-falling without a ‘chute and can end up getting your fingers badly burnt. Believe me, trespass in their back yard and watch out for a ton of bricks falling on your head. My trouble is, I’m stupid enough to ignore my own advice, as I learnt the hard way.

I’m a survivor from the finest bunch of hard-working layabouts in the British Army, The Special Investigation Branch, an appendix of the military police. We’re called Special because we’re the only ones who know what we’re doing, most of the time. Our day job, with sweat-shop overtime, is cleansing the army of riff-raff and wickedness, such as fraud and thievery.

I beat the drum in United Nations controlled Trieste at the time and was a sleuth of fearsome repute, on my own say so, the chocolate chip in the cookie jar. Trieste’s a sort of charming wedding-cake city perched at the north end of the Adriatic and the south end of Sir Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain.

About 4.30pm on that fateful day in the early 1950s, when, thanks to secret agents, I suffered the fright of my short life, I jumped off a trolleybus at the city terminus and, dodging 50 suicidal Italian Alfa Romeo taxi drivers bent on sending me to pasta heaven, slalomed across Piazza Oberdan, leapt farther than Jesse Owens out of the path of one of a million wall-of-death Vespa scooter riders and darted, breathing a prayer, into the sanctuary of Bing’s Bar on the corner of Via Coroneo.

Thus a daily routine on an errand of mercy began with smiles and ended in tears. My charity exceeds my beauty.

Shielding my eyes from the glare of chrome and white tiled walls, I slipped thankfully into a chair at a corner table from where I could scope passing citizens through the large picture window. Those were the days before the phenomenon of the package holiday got into gear. All the tourists were local Italians.

I paid little attention to men, but fashion-conscious girls made up the deficit. Many pranced by like parading on a cat-walk and a few, with legs to invite for supper, wore very skimpy dresses and were well worth asking to stay for breakfast, or else my mind was wandering in the Promised Land.

Bing’s place gleamed so clinically that if stored body parts in jars of formaldehyde were stacked on shelves it could double for a mortuary annex. I jest. Bing’s was a sane oasis in a mad world, slap-bang in the city centre and the SIB crowd’s favourite daylight watering-hole.

The gaffer, showing teeth like oversized tombstones, trotted over and scribbled my order for a small Dreher on his pad. His face dropped at the meagre order or for wasting paper, the enamel memorials vanished and so did he, behind a cloud of steam at a gleaming cappuccino machine.

Minutes later I gazed with muted interest as a brown, boxed-in Jeep, squealing to a stop in a volume of filthy exhaust lung disease outside, parked crookedly and illegally at the kerb. Two hatchet-faced, mean-looking guys, hatless in crumpled suits and salad ties, with bulges under their left armpits, clambered out and nonchalantly swaggered into the bar. Their jackets were buttoned tight. A five-year-old would know they were tooled up with artillery. And I thought Al Capone died in 1947! I considered myself flash in my Montague Burton’s salt and pepper sports jacket, sans piece.

Despite the boost of sartorial superiority, my heart sank at the sight of the arrival of the goon squad. Like Greta Garbo, I wanted to be alone. I pretended to be invisible but they saw through my subterfuge.

D’you know, when I was a piddling Redcap lance-corporal and the closest I came to danger was riding rough-shod over a squaddy with a uniform button undone, I always hefted a loaded pistol? Now that I had climbed the greasy pole to the exalted post of smart-arsed SIB sergeant, and faced the dregs and dangers of fighting evil, my defences consisted solely of briefcase and fountain pen. Funny old world!

The pair of pantomime, not Puss-in-Boots, fugitives from the Chicago Valentine’s Day massacre refused to fade away. They blinked in the reflected light. Like me, they’d forgotten their shades. The short one in front with the pock-marked face carried out an eye-sweep, warily, and, to ruin my day, pinned me down, grimaced and came over, the taller puppy-dog padding behind, sniffing his rear. They dragged up chairs in silence and parked themselves as arrogantly as they’d parked the Jeep, without producing calling-cards. I knew then, they weren’t going to go away.

‘Hi,’ I muttered, being a friendly fellow. ‘How’s things?’

From their hang-dog expressions, things were pretty gloomy.

The Rotweiler, Nick, besides needing a good meal, bore the look of a hangman about to fix the knot round a client’s Adam’s apple. His twisted brain was almost visible through weak, pale eyes. The Labrador clinging to his coat-tails, John, was more a farmer-type who had run out of muck to spread. He cleverly hid the straw in his mouth, so most people missed it.

Me and half the population of Trieste knew they were muscle in the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 to you) department, Southern European Desk, which did the dirty work. Enforcers, to give them a polite title.

They weren’t true spooks, lacked approved sexual deviation or didn’t possess Oxbridge degrees.

The government wastes thousands of pounds training these guys, which includes instruction and lectures on how to be inconspicuous and avoid drawing attention to themselves. They would’ve been less obvious running naked down the street strumming banjos.

Two things Intelligence organisations are never short of are expenses and arrogance. With the first they bribe narks, who furnish bum information to suit the scale of payments, and with the second they lose friends who could supply them with solid stuff. Unlike the SIB, they don’t have to prove anything to show they’re the good guys. Their reputation for being smart is based on the assumption that nobody can be that stupid. Well, that’s flushed the sour grapes out of my system.

My diagnosis of their things being on the slide was on the button.

Their arrival carried a blast of Arctic air to the table. It’s a wonder they weren’t wearing furs and wanting to rub noses with me. 

John ran a fingernail, or the tip of his finger, rather, along the mouse on his upper lip, perhaps counting the hairs. He’d eaten his nails.

 ‘Not bright. Could be better!’

‘I didn’t ask for a weather report,’ I threw back, getting my barb in first.

Nick chewed his teeth.

‘Les, it means we’re up a creek without a paddle.’

My ears were spinning like radar dishes, yet they failed to detect a violin scratching a lament. I swallowed my pity.

‘How sad!’

Bing returned with his lemon-peel face, order pad and a skinny glass of beer with a head like the crest of the Matterhorn. He warmed when the two spies ordered ham rolls and vino bianco. He departed light of step as if he’d just won Littlewoods’ Treble Chance jackpot.

I sipped the ale and grew a white moustache to equal John’s.

‘Welcome to Brains’ Trust,’ I said, using the back of my hand to clear the froth whiskers. ‘If you whisper, I promise not to spill the beans.’

Nick snorted.

‘If you want to make me laugh, Les, try pulling a funny face.’ He went on, ‘We’re running a minor piss-up at Busty’s tonight. Feel like joining in for a splendid hour of complete boredom and misery?’

Busty’s was a small trattoria secreted in a quiet back-water. We, the SIB, preferred its tranquil seclusion compared to the ear-splitting rackets of city centre drinking dens and herded there like gnus to bond and gripe about over-work, poor pay and to cry in our beers.

A traitorous Scottish rat, Jock McHardy, refused to bond with us Sassenachs and leaked Busty’s location to Intelligence rowdies, so they polluted it with their presence, too. Sometimes we clashed but the worst battles were chucking insults and bread rolls at each other. When Burn’s Night arrived we murdered Jock’s haggis.

 ‘Sounds right up my street.’ I told Nick. ‘What’s it in aid of? Nothing to do with earning a crust, I hope. I don’t like the way that beardo weirdo with a scythe follows you two around collecting customers.’

Nick made a noise, which sounded as if he were about to puke. His eyes were like blueberries. Dried ones. John’s moustache collapsed, the mouse had expired.

‘When did you last audition for the Old Vic?’ John inquired, head to one side as if he doubted my sanity. I choked back a witty reply, mainly because I couldn’t think of one.

‘We’re celebrating a day off,’ said Nick mournfully. ‘When Dunford awarded it, I thought either I’d won the George Cross or it must be Christmas.’

Everyone’s a comedian.

Dunford was the major in charge of the Intelligence Corps’ Trieste Security Office. An officer promoted a millennium beyond his ability, Nick once told me. But it didn’t matter a shake of a lamb’s tail. He was only the pilot and enjoyed the freedom of being totally ignored by the cabin crew. A very loyal lot!

Having a good idea how these knaves operate, I began to feel queasy.

‘Stop hiding behind words. You sods are always playing bloody games, like hide-and-seek in graveyards. What evil part have you got for me, if I join the party, Dracula?’

Nick jerked back in his seat as if someone had tried to bury their fangs in his neck.

‘You call yourself a friend and yet accuse us of underhand behavior.’

John shook his head despairingly and stared at me sadly as if he was about to burst into tears. His mum didn’t wean him until he was eighteen.

‘Got it in one,’ I retorted.

Nick shrugged. He loosened his Tootal tie. It was green with red stars.

‘Remember the other day when that idiot of ours shot his mate at the border and then got arrested in possession of a Sten gun?’

I nodded. ‘And the police released him because they knew he was foolish enough to work for your lot, and the pressure you put on them, of course.’

My sarcasm obviously wasn’t worth a reply.

John hooked one arm over the back of his chair. His tie displayed a colourful vomit pattern.

‘He didn’t croak the other man.’

John must have been watching an Edward G. Robinson film. I half expected him to stick his feet on the table.

I gave him the why-should-I-care look.

‘But it was his Sten gun, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes, it certainly was,’ Nick said. ‘But it wasn’t his finger on the trigger.’ His voice dropped two octaves, like a guy discussing sex with his grandmother. ‘Tito’s UDB shot him. They discovered he was on our payroll.’

It was my turn to be tickled. I needed relief. We were giddy on a conversational carousel.

‘Superintendent Williams invented that story as a cover-up. He’s Welsh, but on our side. You know that. You’ve got a poor memory. Why repeat it anyway?’

Williams was the Brit police officer in charge of Lazaretto, the district which included a long stretch of the Trieste-Yugoslavia border where the man was shot. It was an area where a country walk could be the first step to heaven, or hell.

‘Coincidence,’ Nick said. ‘He thought he was doing us a favour and all along he was right, although we ain’t going to tell him.’

I blinked several times, and it wasn’t the harsh light, or the grammar.

‘I’ve just fallen off the ride. Shall we just forget it?’

‘We could bin it, but the UDB won’t. They’re madder than a bidet full of rattlesnakes, as our Yankee friends would say.’

I wondered about that, then glanced up. The ceiling wasn’t falling in on me. The UDBA, the Yugoslav Communist Security Service. I could write all I knew of it on a pinhead and still leave room for the Lord’s Prayer, but its tentacles spread far and wide and murder ranked alongside slivovitz in esteem.

My drollery rammed an iceberg. I had a nasty worm twisting my gut. I had to ask.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

Nick looked at John and John looked at Nick. They both looked at me.

‘I’m starting sign language lessons next week,’ I told them and began to feel queasier.

Bing finally emerged like an apparition from poking around behind the bar and sauntered over with rolls and a carafe of plonk. He placed the victuals proudly on the table as though they were the crown jewels and peered expectantly at the renegades.

‘Pay him,’ Nick grunted.

John raised his hands, palms upwards.

Nick leant back, shoved a paw in a trouser pocket and pulled out empty lining, his magic act. His downcast expression mirrored a guy who’d just bought his bookie a new Mercedes. His transparent eyes fell on me.

I don’t know where all those spy expenses were that I was so envious of. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d forgotten the combination of their safe.

I leered and answered smartly, ‘You’d better organise a flag day.’

Like waifs, we all peered up at Bing, who had enlarged into a monster as he engulfed us, a face like yesterday’s spaghetti. He knew he’d lost. He grunted something in Italian, which is not exceptional as it was his native tongue.

‘Next time we pay,’ said John affably. ‘You know us.’

Bing shrunk back to normal size. ‘Si, I know you.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Why I getta punished this way?’ He turned, crossed the floor and melted back into the steam cloud like the Cheshire cat.

‘Some people are easily upset,’ Nick ventured. He didn’t look very regretful.

John played mother and poured the wine. He didn’t offer me any.

Nick gulped some wine, put the glass down and rested his elbows on the table, cupping his chin in his hands. Perhaps his neck ached. There was a blue flare out on the square. A trolleybus arm had clicked across a join in the overhead electric wire. For a moment I thought I had suffered a flash of inspiration.

‘I’m glad we caught you, Les.’

I gazed at him sideways, suspicious. Was I in a trap?

‘How did you know I’d be here?’

His lips twitched. Almost a rare smile.

‘You’re always here before five every day, near enough. You wait for your piece of skirt who works in the clothes shop round the corner.’

There was a long pause. I wanted to smash his ugly mug in for the inelegant description of my girlfriend. But something in his voice made me think hard. Did he fancy her himself? Perhaps he needed more than his teeth rearranged.

‘Am I so predictable?’ My eyes narrowed. ‘What colour socks am I wearing?’

‘Yellow,’ said John, looking as if he still hadn’t been weaned.

I tipped more beer down my throat.

‘Now tell me, in words of one syllable, why you’re so happy to meet me.’

Nick attempted to paint a hurt expression on his damaged features, without too much success.

‘Do I detect a sardonic note in your question?’ he asked. ‘That’s the problem with you SIB types. Trust no one. Carry out a post mortem on everything you’re told.’

‘Just get on with it or you’ll have me in tears,’ I told him.

I could’ve added that I had suffered all the sins that pushed me up the ladder and one of the black arts of success lay in the ability to impress toe-rags that I knew more than I was saying. No relevance, but I toss this into the kitty as a freebie. 

By the way, I wasn’t taking liberties or stealing time off, not really. I neatly arrange gaps in nicking felons to fit in with meeting my piece of skirt - girlfriend - when she breaks from slavery around five each afternoon. I’d better tell you about her, not that she’s in this story by rights, but you’re probably nosey.

She flogs shoddy goods at exorbitant prices in Bagnolia’s, an up-market Harrods on Via Carducci. I waltzed into the emporium to buy a pair of yellow socks at the haberdashery, and spotted this angel behind the counter. I wanted to buy her instead but God’s price was out of my reach. So I simply bought the socks, which she helped me choose, and fell in love. Not with the socks, with her.

She now bugs my mind every waking moment. I shouldn’t become paranoid, but I keep hearing wedding bells. With luck, they’re cracked.

All the same, I wore myself to a frazzle trying to persuade her that I could nominate her as a late applicant for the post-war baby boom, but the response was disheartening. Despite all my hard work, all I got for my pains were goodnight kisses. It’s no good, I’ll have to find bells that are in tune. Scary.

Sometimes I yearn for those far off red-letter days. I don’t wear yellow socks any more.

‘Where’s your girlfriend now?’ Nick wanted to know.

I wanted to know what sort of question was that and why the interest. I think he had one of his pale blue peepers on her.

I gave him the hooded eye look.

‘She’s here in disguise, stupid. If you like, you can call me Sweetheart.’

Under the terms of their contracts, highly secretive and very important agents of MI6 are not permitted to laugh at other people’s cracks. So my chirpy comments were met by a blank wall.

I shrugged.

‘I just wondered if she was still at her shop,’ he explained, as if it were any of his business anyway.

I decided not to poke him after all. He was ugly enough already. I’ll kick him in the testicles instead, as soon as I can persuade him to stand up. I cupped my hands over an imaginary crystal ball on the table.

‘Yes, she is and she’s now selling a dunce cap to a guy who looks like. . .’ I studied Nick carefully. ‘. . .No, I don’t believe it.’

Nick wished he’d never made the dumb statement.

Under the colonnade supporting the Dante Alighieri School across the road, a swarthy character in a leather jacket and a shiny cap pulled down over his eyes leant against one of the pillars and fired up a fag. He seemed to be lurking in the shade and wasn’t selling ice cream. He reminded me of Harry Lime in the film, The Third Man, although I couldn’t hear a zither being plucked. I counted the Mafia out. They might abound in Pastaland but Trieste was a peaceful metropolis and mobsters were banned.

Nick sat back, sipped wine, and changed the subject.

‘D’you know Josif Broz?’

Had Nick decided my education needed upgrading, or did he think I cared? Admittedly, I was a bit worried now. If there was a test later on, I was in trouble.

I shook my head and replied, ‘I don’t have many friends.’

Nick made one of those clicking noises with his tongue and then revealed that he knew Josif, which I hoped gave him pleasure.

‘If you’ve any interest in the city where you’re serving your country you should,’ he lectured me pompously. ‘He’s Tito, you know, the Commie leader of Yugoslavia.’

‘Ah,’ I cried, ‘that’s the place to where you keep taxiing spies and getting the poor buggers shot.’

John’s face turned into a caricature of a drowning man.

‘We’re now trying to be serious,’ he gurgled.

Nick cased his roll to find where the ham was hidden and then began to munch it.

‘Well, Tito’s got a distant, almost on Mars, cousin, called Andro Broz,’ he announced between mouthfuls. ‘Listen carefully. Andro is the Section Head of the Trieste Infiltration Unit. That’s the clique that organizes all the opposition and riots here with the intention of taking over the city and incorporating it into Yugoslavia.’

‘Why don’t you crucify him?’

Nick ignored the question.

‘He’s a very dangerous man. A reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible in his own depraved way. Do you recall dealing with a case when the wheel came off the Governor’s official car?’

I nodded. Curiosity began to gnaw at my innards against my will.

One morning, about six weeks before, the Military Governor, Major General Sir T.J.W. Winterton, was travelling from his residence in Duino Castle into the city in his official Jag along the coastal autostrada and, when passing the historically sad Miramare Castle, the nearside front wheel decided it needed a change and detaching itself, rolled on independently.

This upset the car and the general, who got a shock, witnessing his car overtaking its own front wheel, and sent government bigwigs and Brit army brass into a bigger spin than the Jag. Assassination and sabotage were bandied about like dandelion seeds in a breeze, with accusing eyes centred on Yugoslavia, which coveted Trieste.

I was blessed with the problem of sorting out truth from fiction.

Everyone swore that the wheel did not come off the car because it couldn’t. Now you understand what a baffling case I’d had tossed into my lap.

Experts tried convincing me that because the wheels are tightened with a single nut which screws on in the opposite direction to the spin of the wheel it simply cannot work loose and come off. Get that okay? I wish I did.

Anyway, I got fed up with listening to gibberish spouted by mechanical wizards. If the bloody wheel fell off, it fell off. Try telling General Winterton that it didn’t fall off. He was in the car at the time and suffered a humiliating jerk, even before I was lumped with the inquiry.

Most of the SIB stalwarts I was obliged to work with were great guys who knew how to plod through a case, like running in treacle. I’m a simple, sharp-thinking genius and told the general’s ADC that the wheel came off because it hadn’t been tightened correctly. And whose fault was that? The mechanic who serviced the Jag. He was a civilian named Goran Chorvat, a Croatian by birth. The case was wound up by Chorvat being sacked because he was nominated as the scapegoat.

‘Been prying into my affairs, eh?’ I accused the ‘I’ men.

‘The general was most impressed with your report,’ Nick dribbled slowly. ‘By the way, the man killed on the border was also part of the Broz clan. It’s all rather complicated.’

I thought it would be easier to climb a monkey puzzle tree than understand the convoluted minds of the Intelligence Corps.

My report! The chief, Captain Beach, The Welch Regiment, went through the roof when he first saw it. When he drifted back to his desk, he explained to me, as if talking to a fool, that all sorts of people might get the wrong idea when they read my report. He killed the heading with one stroke of his blue pencil.

I don’t really understand what all the fuss was about. I had titled my report quite simply, “The Nut Case.”

As I followed my smile out of the office, I thought I caught the expression “Piss-taker!” behind me, but I must’ve misheard. Captain George Llewellyn Beach, the finest Taff since Lloyd George, who knew my father, would never dream of such profanity.

Wait! Christ Almighty! You could’ve knocked me down with a feather. This Intelligence maestro beside me actually had the ear of the military governor, who praised my work.

‘Oh, yeh! I suppose the general’s recommendation for my medal is in the post.’

‘You’re not good-looking enough for medals,’ laughed John.

‘Nor do I bend the right way,’ I added.

John looked flummoxed. He was slow to catch on and didn’t want to show his ignorance by asking what I meant.

Nick continued with his explanation.

He told me that Chorvat was one of Broz’s agents. They were both born in Kumravec, a Croatian village of 1500 people, which was Tito’s birthplace also. Probably the whole village had sexually intermingled. They didn’t need to slash their wrists to become blood-brothers.

‘What was he doing at Duino Castle,’ I asked, ‘counting the spanners?’

Chorvat sometimes stood in as the general’s driver and also helped out in the castle when required. Odd-job man really and was able to pick up tit-bits of information from listening to the staff, who would never dream that the little dark fellow polishing the silver was an intelligence agent. A vassal, he would be invisible to them anyway.

Now I knew what colour Nick’s eyes were. Blue rinse, well watered, like my Aunt Aggie’s hair.

‘We also had him on our books,’ Nick said.

‘Ah, ah! A double agent to boot.’

‘It’s not funny. Wait till you hear what’s coming next.’

‘Hurry up, I want a leak,’ I urged. I didn’t really.

‘Chorvat has crossed you off his Christmas card list. And to add fuel to the fire, Andro has sworn to get his revenge for losing his contact at Duino Castle.’

I just prevented a sneer in time.

‘I thought Muslims didn’t celebrate Christmas.’

Nick shook his head as if I required a brain transplant.

‘Croats are Catholics.’

I had to think of something quickly. ‘They also invented the tie,’ I said, annoyed that I had got something wrong. Right out of character..

John sniffed and his moustache waggled dangerously.

‘We’re trying to help you, believe it or not. Now, wash your ears out and listen carefully. We believe, from snatches of info picked up in our travels, that the TIU have got the knives out and are looking for the blood of the person who shopped Goran.’ He paused and a silly grin spread across his lips. ‘That’s you.’

I felt my face tighten, but why did John look so pleased?

I should’ve kept my big mouth shut and waited for these two pigeons to leave their planet and flutter back to Earth. But I didn’t.

‘You’re nuts! Why should they want me eliminated over something so petty?’

‘Croatians are very sensitive people.’

‘So every Croat who gets fired kills the boss?’

‘Not all belong to the TIU. You upset the applecart and word got back to Tito who ordered the elimination of the troublemaker.’

What a load of nonsense! They were taking the piss, for some reason known only to themselves. I mimed a yawn.

Think about it. Tito, the leader and president of Yugoslavia, who rules the country with an iron fist, takes out a contract on an insignificant, paltry SIB sergeant, who got a so-called minor spy sacked in ignorance. Ludicrous!

I hate to admit it, but, sadly, I was wrong again.

I asked, ‘What time is the next train to Cloud Cuckoo Land?’

‘Don’t scoff,’ Nick sniggered. ‘If we’d reported this officially, you would’ve been sent back home for your own safety. If we’d told Uncle George, the same result. We know you like this place, you Eytie-loving prat, so decided to shield you ourselves.’

What a relief! I was safe in the hands of a couple of quirky knights. Misguided fool that I was, I believed they wanted to nursemaid me. And far to the north, safely across the Channel, the Land of Hope and Glory slept peacefully, knowing Nick and John were sweating tears to keep it safe and secure. A thought jumped into my mind that emigration might be a good idea.

I said, ‘You’re mistaken about my feelings towards Italians. I’ve applied for a posting to Helsinki.’

John looked puzzled.

‘Helsinki?’

‘It’s the capital of Finland.’

‘I know where it is. Does the SIB run a detachment there?’

‘It will when I get there.’

‘Surely there’s no Brits there.’

I released a deep breath.

‘Thank goodness! I’ll have one long holiday.’

At this point, Nick interrupted.

‘Can we get serious?’

‘I am,’ I said.

Still, these guys knew more than they should. For a start, they weren’t supposed to be familiar with SIB cases. We were the men of mystery. No one knew how we operated. We wanted to keep it that way. It gave us the edge when we came up against the outlaws. Nick even had the neck to call our boss Uncle.

Uncle was Captain George Beach, as I mentioned earlier, the leader of 93 Special Investigation Section. He was one of the nicest, kindest men you could ever wish to dance the polka with, even when he wore his brown boots. A pussycat in a sheep’s clothing. Adhering to the traditions of a true SIB officer, who employed the underrated skill of delegation, he had never muddied his slippers in the front line. Yet he had no enemies, only friends. God broke the mould after creating him.

 ‘You’re beginning to scare me,’ I wavered. And I wasn’t kidding.

No joking. I’d been bombed during the war, machine-gunned by the nose gunner in a Luftwaffe Heinkel He111─and to this day I don’t what I did to upset him─shot at and mortar-bombed in Greece, and yet all this familiarity with ordnance didn’t breed contempt, it bred greater fear.

John shrugged. ‘Don’t let it bother you too much. It might be all mouth and bluff.’

‘Make your mind up,’ I suggested. ‘Am I in the shit, or not?’

‘We can’t answer that,’ Nick replied.

‘Now I’m really shaking. You two jokers are either plain stupid or malicious scaremongers.’

‘Don’t think much of your choices,’ John complained without conviction.

‘I wish it were a joke,’ Nick said.

I almost told John it was milking time.

I knew these two charmers of old. They were so twisted a corkscrew looked straight. My brain was whirring.

‘So what happens next?’

‘Be constantly on the alert when moving around the city,’ Nick said officiously. ‘They could strike at any time, but we suspect after dark for obvious reasons. In particular watch out for a shortish, dark skinned guy who usually wears a leather top and one of those ridiculous shiny caps.’

I glanced through the window. I felt chuffed that I wasn’t the only one who could be wrong. The loiterer near the school entrance still lurked casually against the pillar.

I said, ‘You mean like that bozo across the street who’s interested in your bald patch?’

My two companions, trained spooks remember, turned like a pas de deux and stared across the busy street. Nick rubbed the top of his head. They couldn’t have made the guy jump higher if they had tugged a length of string tied to his genitals. At least they confirmed what I always believed - the ‘I’ Corps was manned by blockheads.

The guy first froze, facing Bing’s, then took off his shiny cap and waved it like a passenger on the Queen Mary sailing from Southampton. Or cheering Tito, who had just secretly arrived in his bullet-proof limo. He stuck it back on his head and hopped to the pavement, waiting for a non-existent break in the traffic.

The two clowns at my table, who a minute before had sworn to protect me forever, quickly turned their backs and pretended they weren’t looking. They were light years behind the plot.

A Vespa ridden by another man in a leather jacket, which must’ve been the standard uniform for Croatian assassins, screeched to a halt and burning rubber outside the bar. Meanwhile the first leather jacket had survived the kamikaze street crossing and was almost in the doorway, with one hand reaching inside his jacket. And he wasn’t feeling for his wallet to settle our bill.

I was shaken out of hypnosis by my guardian angel, one of the best in the business, yelling inside me, ‘Duck!’ I ducked and cracked my head on the corner of the table. Even before the blood spurted, the dung hit the fan and I witnessed an astonishing feat that equalled the best John Ford western.

First, though, let me say I didn’t suddenly fear death was staring me in the face. Not that I wasn’t looking but I didn’t want my life flashing in front of my eyes. There were one or two incidents that I’d no wish to see again.

Back to the action.

While the guy’s foot still hovered over the threshold, John leapt up like a kangaroo and dived like Esther Williams, at the same time whipping a Beretta from the holster under his arm and squeezing the trigger before he hit the ground. I wondered if he’d trained at Bertram Mills Circus.

The punter at the door collected a third eye while John whirled round on one knee and slung another quick shot at the Vespa rider.  Billy the Kid would’ve returned to petty larceny had he seen it. The shocked rider found a split second to loose a wild slug through the window before slowly toppling over and collapsing in the gutter, with the get-away machine falling on top of him, its engine warbling a death chant, as I witnessed proof that blood mixes with oil.

He never even got a parking ticket. Vespas were road-tax free.

I sensed a small, very small, pang of sorrow for the two monkeys. There wasn’t a prayer mat in sight. If they’d been Muslims, as I first thought, they’d be in Paradise now. On second thoughts, that’s a lie. I wasn’t a bit sorry.  John slowly levered hjmself upright and looked cockily at me. His mum would’ve been proud of him, seeing him standing on his own two feet. I’m amazed that he didn’t blow down the barrel of his smoking gun. He slipped it back in his holster like pocketing change and murmured softly and calmly, ‘We said we weren’t joking. Now you’re safe. We’ve trumped their hands.’ Probably a whist drive fan. ‘That’s that problem solved.’ He could’ve just completed The Times crossword.

Nick, still seated but redundantly gripping an automatic, nodded agreement and exclaimed, ‘Brilliant! Isn’t he brilliant?’ I’d never seen him smile before, although it didn’t improve his looks.

It was the biggest understatement since 1066, when William the Conk told his wife, Matilda, ‘I’m booking a day-excursion across the Channel to Hastings for a chat with King Harold about the Royal Succession. Shan’t be long!’

In quivering undertones, I replied, ‘Fantastic! What does he do for an encore, raise the dead?’ and wondered when the trembling would stop. I remembered Miss Hayter at Sunday School telling us that Jesus worked miracles. I studied John closely but he didn’t look much like a prophet. For starters, he hadn’t grown a straggly beard.

Well, they say never judge a book by its cover. The guy was cooler than a naked Eskimo. He wouldn’t break out in a sweat wearing a mink coat in the Amazon jungle. I decided never to reach for my fag case again while with him. What would he tell his mum next time he wrote home?

I then knew for certain that my two former friends were stark raving bonkers.

Nick hadn’t recovered from his excitement over John’s Annie Oakley act. ‘Marvelous!’ he hissed in my ear. We both stood up. He was very lucky. I forgot my promise to kick him in the balls.

‘Sure was,’ I drawled like John Wayne and watched a blob of red ink and brains well from the hole in the forehead of the body in the entrance. ‘Tell you what, pardner, why don’t you rewind the film and do it all over again? I love harmless fun.’

Before I could think of something really sarcastic to add, anyone who was anybody descended upon us and mingled with many who were nobody. Official cars and military vehicles, police cars and ambulances, dustcarts and pedestrians drooling spaghetti, all converged on the carnage with sirens and bells, and cries and murmurs. With the entire population of Trieste packing Piazza Oberdan, burglars could have a field day. I missed the helicopter. A couple of long-faced characters in top hats and carrying tape measures, who arrived in a long, black limo, bothered me.

I don’t know who blew the whistle. A police riot squad popped up out of the blue and began herding back a gawping throng of the morbid curious and thrill-seekers. Ambulances with disappointed crews hung around doing nothing. Only one person still alive had suffered injury. Me. A keen first-aider wanted to put my head in a sling, I think. I refused because it was the only one I had.

A few sailors peppered the crowd from HMS Forth, a submarine depot ship. visiting the city with a rapist among the crew. Another headache in my bulging briefcase. I hadn’t caught him yet, but I would; there were 1500 captive suspects on board. If I didn’t find the culprit while the ship was docked, I’d learn to dance the hornpipe and sail with her.

I didn’t hear the bugle but the cavalry made a late arrival. The Reverend George Beach galloped bravely into the trenches on a white charger, collar right way round, no bible. The trickle of blood running into my left eye fascinated him, vampire like. I hoped it wouldn’t drip on my pearl grey slacks. ‘I’ll survive without a transfusion,’ I consoled him, and he gave me a queer look.

Another, deep voice slashed at me, ‘You’re bloody flippant.’

I searched for the source. A firm-jowled leather face peered over the captain’s head. I recognized man-mountain Sergeant Punchy Patten, self-appointed chief bodyguard of the commanding officer.

I tossed him a fast grin. ‘No, just bloody,’ I cracked.

I kept the grin in place to annoy him. His face looked liked scribble in a kid’s crayoning book. He sheathed his sword, the floor opened beneath his feet and he disappeared. Only metaphorically, unfortunately.

When it came to bandying words, Punchy played in junior league compared to my sparkling first division repartee. His tour de force was courage. Neither man nor beast frightened him in this world. Brain power wasn’t needn’t for his skills. I would’ve faced tougher verbal opposition from two planks.

Despite his shortcomings we became lifelong friends. Now and then we exchanged greetings. He used to send me cyanide pills and say they were Liquorice Allsorts. I would return them and say I didn’t like the pink ones. Healthy, friendly fun.

Once old Beachy knew I wouldn’t bleed to death, his face fell. He patted me playfully on the back and addressed me, ‘Leslie, I’ve never had the pleasure of putting my boot up a finer or braver ass. You’re granted an immediate battlefield commission and a strong recommendation for a KGB.’ There were so many awards flying around, he got them mixed up.

He didn’t say that.

Captain George Beach’s heart-warming praise brought tears to my eyes. He really said, ‘Well done, Hooper. Pleased you’re not badly hurt.’ He swallowed his chagrin over my minor cut like a man. Had I been shot, it would’ve increased his sympathy vote in the officers’ club. Don’t ask me why. It’s an officer thing.

I played dumb. It would’ve pricked his bubble if I told him I’d done nothing. He needn’t have wet himself over me, anyway. If the worst had come to the worst I would’ve squirted fountain pen ink in the assassins’ faces.

The silver lining was that I foresaw a bunch of Brownie points for my Annual Confidential. Gentleman that he was, he never asked me what I was doing in Bing’s when I was supposed to be brutalizing jolly jack tars into rape confessions. Being exceedingly clever, I didn’t tell him, either.

Drinking a crafty beer on duty also failed to register. But that was unimportant. We all did. Anyway, no one could define when duty ended and social life began. Such details were personal decisions. Officialdom and I were poor bed fellows.

Before he vanished to confer with more important people in grey suits and uniforms with red tabs, who were all nodding sagely and avoiding eye contact with corpses, while desperately trying to get their photos taken by a horde of newspaper cameramen, George announced magnanimously, ‘Take the rest of the day off.’

After a pause, he gave me what is called a penetrating look and made a most remarkable statement. ‘I’m glad you didn’t shoot him,’ he said, and actually sounded glad.

I blinked rapidly, my eyelids out of control. I first thought my ears had deceived me. Even more remarkable, he knew full well I didn’t tote a weapon, or did know before he went doolally. I had even forgotten what a gun looked like. I resigned myself to spending the rest of my Trieste days serving under a potty officer and tried to forget it.

Perhaps I’d better explain that my ambivalence towards George Beach can be simply excused. He was not an officer and a gentleman. Just the opposite, a gentleman first and then a poor officer. If his duty as an officer conflicted with his generous nature, then the kindness, like cream, always floated to the top. I could not wish to serve under a nicer person. Pass the tissues.

Meanwhile, the officers and gentlemen disporting themselves like unrehearsed ham actors weren’t really interested in the seriousness of the occasion. They wanted to be able to say later that they were there, to give the impression that their presence made a difference. Well worth an extra pink gin in the mess. Nick, John and I were dismissed as bit players in the drama. Importance levels equates with rank, you know.

I didn’t ask Beachy where the rest of the day was hiding. But what a gent! What other madman would reveal such generosity, thinking that I actually intended to return my nose to the grindstone?

Punchy looked daggers. He’s terrific. I loved that big man.

Bing hugged his precious coffee machine, sobbing bitterly. Perhaps he’d forgotten to renew his window insurance.

I was beginning to realize that I was the only sane person left in the world.

Chaos reigned for hours but eventually everything got sorted out, despite the best efforts of a few Sandhurst drop-outs and a couple of lordly ex colonial-type Brits in pin-striped suits, probably Intelligence geeks, who pretended they knew what was happening

During the confusion a little bird inside me whispered that the two MI6 taxi-drivers had deliberately provoked the incident. I calmed my fears with the idea that there was no hard evidence that the thugs were after my skin. They could’ve had the two idiots - sorry, agents - in their sights. Even more alarming, maybe they were completely innocent and the victims of a trigger-happy circus performer. No, that’s stretching things too far, I decided, then thought of something else. Perhaps they wanted to shoot Bing for serving frothy beer.

Happily for me, however, this proved what I mentioned earlier. I was still a surviving member of the SIB.

I had another frightening thought that even the knees-up at Busty’s had been arranged as a trap for the Croatian hit-men, with me as bait. The MI6 chumps got caught with their trousers down when the boyos struck in daylight. Of course, they never held the jelly-and-custard fling and I didn’t receive another invite.

They both looked a little frayed after the fun and games. I almost smelled their brains smouldering. I realised why. Just like the Governor’s Jag, the wheel had come off their plans. Nick knew he could expect a red-hot poker up his backside. I considered applying to heat it in the furnace. They wouldn’t be meeting the Queen. Whoever their God might be, it certainly wasn’t Lord Baden-Powell.

I enjoyed that smug feeling you get when you know you’re safe in the shallow end of the pool.

On the other side of the coin lurked the sure knowledge that Intelligence chiefs knew all along of the danger of retaliation by those Croatian bandits politely known as the TIU, and turned a blind eye to the threat, letting it slide for their own ends. I don’t know why and, although they suspected my life was on the line, they stuck to form and kept it secret. It can’t be because I once told a spook that he’d dropped his rattle, can it?

I was a little late rescuing the goddess, she who made Gina Lollobrigida look like Old Mother Hubbard, from the Bagnolia store manager’s whip, and to keep her happy, carried her off to El Dorado, a classy and disgustingly over-priced osteria behind Government House, there to repair my shattered nerves with a few jars. I wasn’t going to patronize premises that had a bullet hole in the window, which might have been in my head.

A decision that returned to haunt me.

The effect of the Wild West shoot-out had more potency than I realized. My brain got addled, for I actually ordered a full-spread dinner, served by a toffee-nosed flunkey, which left me skint for six months, including tip, almost.

24 hours later I stopped crying.

Final thoughts: I’ll receive no gallantry medal for participating in the Battle of Bing’s Bar. And if sympathy for my war wound is measured on a temperature chart it will show ten degrees of frost. I rose no higher on the Section’s popularity scale. I’ll swap the tiny plaster on my head for a larger one tomorrow.

END

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