Bluebolt One (3 page)

Shaw again, said, “That man who—died. Know who he was?”

“I gathered he was a man called Handley Mason. The police’ll be making the usual further inquiries—”

“Dammit,” Latymer broke in irritably. “Of course they will. And they’ll confirm he was Handley Mason all right. I, however, know a little more than the police, and I know that he was a Foreign Office man___of sorts.”

Shaw raised an eyebrow.

Latymer picked up a sheet of paper from his blotter and studied it. He said, “I’ll explain. Up to three years ago, Mason had been the usual diplomat doing the rounds of the overseas Embassies with a bit of time in London in between. Last appointment as
such
was as a second secretary in Washington, where he was employed on information services. After that, for some reason which the F.O. people refuse to discuss even with me, blast ’em, his name disappears from the Foreign Office List. Now, nothwithstanding that omission, he turns up on attachment to the Moscow Embassy, still with the equivalent rank and pay of second secretary, but with certain duties which in the strict sense I’d call non-diplomatic and which I believe were only cover for—well, for other activities, activities connected with counter-espionage, in fact. After that, he goes on loan to the Commonwealth Relations Office and is appointed in an unofficial advisory capacity to Sierra Leone. Then he’s back again in the Foreign Office, but this time in the commercial section. Now, that’s' a somewhat curious record—at least, I think so.” Latymer leaned forward, jabbing the ruler towards Shaw.

He went on, “Here’s the rest of it: at the time of his death he’d left the F.O., so
officially
they’ve no further interest in him. He was working as a Public Relations Officer for a commercial firm with interests in Africa—the British African Trading Corporation. But between you and me, Shaw, I’m pretty certain from what I’ve been told by our man in Nogolia that he was actually employed on counter-espionage, though the F.O. man flatly denied that. He was quite huffy, as a matter of fact, when I dared to suggest it. You know what these gilded young gentlemen of the Foreign Office are like. . . anyhow, I’ve got my own ideas as to what Handley Mason may have been working on when he was killed.”

“You’re quite sure he was killed, sir? The way I saw it last night, it
could
very easily have been suicide or an accident, as I said, though I don’t-”

“Dammit to hell!” Latymer was glaring at him. “Handley Mason didn’t commit suicide, I can assure you of that, my dear boy! Why the devil should he—and why should he have been drunk, which I gather was one of the theories?”

Shaw grinned. “I don’t know, sir. Except that even agents are human. When they’re allowed to be, that is!”

Latymer gave an irritable grunt and tapped his desk with the ruler. “Well, he certainly was killed. Remember, you’re a little out of date by now. I’ve already had the post mortem report, you see—in the circumstances, Scotland Yard was urged to get a move on, double-quick, and the result’s just been rushed across to me here.” He took another sheet of paper from his blotter, waved it at Shaw. “Not only was Mason murdered, but he was dead before he left the train, and the pathologist has been able to pinpoint the time of death pretty closely. It seems he was murdered some time after the train ran out of Green Park—between there and the time he fell from the compartment, anyhow. And that, together with the fact that there was an unauthorized guard aboard that train, that the guard was alone with Mason for at least part of the journey, and has since disappeared, means that so far as I’m concerned that aspect of the case is open and shut. The fight you saw could have been when the guard killed Mason, which would most likely be just before he pushed the body out.”

Shaw asked, “What was the actual cause of death?”

“Pressure on a vital point in the neck—and very cleverly done, too, with just the right amount of force to do the job without leaving much in the way of evidence. I dare say the killer thought the damage resulting from the fall would have hidden it altogether. They nearly got away with it, too. If I hadn’t been rung by the F.O. and then had those suspicions of my own about Mason’s work, they would have. In the circumstances as they first appeared to be, that body would have been taken for granted and no detailed examination would have been made—at any rate, provided the guard hadn’t got cold feet and vamoosed as he did. As it is, they’ve been bowled out.”

Shaw nodded. “Evidently. But if it’s murder. . . why choose that way? Surely it’s a little on the clumsy side, sir?”

“Certainly not. I don’t agree at all, for reasons as afore-stated. Besides which, the guard’s got clear away so far, and no one saw it happen, except you—and you thought it was something fancy like suicide! Now then—here's what I’m getting at: this was no casual murder, Shaw. Handley Mason was on to something big, and because of that he had to die— I’m certain of that. It may be that he’d stumbled on to it almost by accident as it were, could have been working off his own bat and was quite genuinely not linked with the F.O. at all. I just don’t know—but I suppose the young gentleman of the Foreign Office could have been speaking the simple truth when he said they knew nothing about Mason’s current activities.”

“What about his own firm, sir?”

“They don’t know a thing about it, couldn’t help at all. I happen to know one of their directors and I spoke to him personally. No dice—and I’m sure he wasn’t holding anything back. And yet I’m sure of my facts. One of the things that fits—and you’ll see why in a moment—is simply that the guard involved is a coloured man. Have you any idea where he may have come from, by the way?”

“He was an African Negro, I should say. He had the look of a Kroo—educated, and obviously capable of holding down a better job than a Tube guard, but still a Kroo.”

Latymer nodded as though in satisfaction. “Africa again, same as Mason’s firm. Fits all right. And there’s Kroos in Nogolia, as well as in Liberia.”

“Yes sir. But what’s the connection?”

Latymer frowned and said quietly, “I foresee big trouble coming out there, Shaw. What d’you know of the set-up in Nogolia?”

“Nothing much, sir.” Shaw rubbed a brown hand across his jaw, reflectively. “I know they’ve been independent a good long time, of course___and somehow they’ve managed to keep aloof—fairly aloof—from all the riots and risings in the rest of the continent. Or so I thought. They’re friendly enough towards us still, aren’t they? About the only African state where we’re at all welcome these days.”

Latymer said, “Yes, they are, so far as the Prime Minister’s concerned—dear old Tshemambi. He’s a grand old chap—he was a native councillor before independence, very pro-British —that doesn’t make him very popular currently, of course —and he’s got a long tradition of friendliness towards this country. Basically, most of the thinking Nogos, the responsible ones, are only too glad to have the Americans and ourselves keep what’s left of our footing there. We’ve both poured a devil of a lot of hard cash into Nogolia in the past, and we’ve gone on doing so in spite of all that’s happened in Africa since. Of course, the bone of contention, as it were, is the very thing we’ve been buttering the Nogos up because of—I mean the Bluebolt control-station, up near Manalati in the Naka Valley. That’s what’s causing all the trouble.”

Shaw said, “So that’s it, I might have guessed.” Mentally he went over what he knew of Bluebolt, the big armed satellite recently put into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida, U.S.A. Developed by a joint U.S.-British Navy team (who, incidentally, had stuck like leeches to their offspring against weighty opposition from the Army and Air Force, each of whom had tried to take it over on its successful completion) Bluebolt was the ultimate weapon, and as yet there was no known defence against it. The huge satellite carried one enormous nuclear missile which packed a punch having the equivalent of a fully loaded Polaris submarine’s entire destruction potential, and, depending on its position in space at any given time, that load could be despatched on to almost any earth target, with one hundred per cent, accuracy, by electronic impulses beamed from the Naka Valley control-station. To date, Bluebolt was still on the secret list, and so no operational details whatever had been released to the Press on either side of the Atlantic. To the unsuspecting public it was just another rather pointless satellite, one of many chunks of metal to be watched from the garden at night as it sped on its shining way around the world, while the control-station itself was, for purposes of public consumption, designated merely as a point for beaming signals to radiocommunications balloon satellites.

Shaw had often wondered why the decision had ever been taken (though admittedly it had been taken before events had reached their current ‘low’) to put the control-station in Africa, considering the perennially turbulent state of that continent. In fact, whatever the friendly feelings of the Nogolian Government, he had privately considered the decision to be unwise and dangerous; but the official view had been clear and adamant: It was a risk, but it was the lesser of two risks, and it was considered a fair one. It was essential, under the new concept of ‘dispersed defence’ favoured by the Western Powers, to site the control-station outside the land masses of Europe and North America, so that it could be used as a major ‘strike-back’ threat which could be put into effect even after an attack had already been mounted and those land masses had come under very heavy saturation. Undoubtedly, the official mind had argued, so far as the British Isles at all events were concerned, any attack would be far too concentrated and saturating for the Services to be able to rely on a control point surviving it; and any risk was preferable to that of siting such a post on territory absolutely certain to be attacked at a very early stage. Africa had been the only reasonable answer.

Latymer was looking impatient. He snapped, “I said, I suppose you do realize how damned important Bluebolt is?”

“I’m sorry, sir. Yes, I do indeed—”

“It’s all very well to talk about Polaris the way they do. With up-to-date anti-submarine know-how, and techniques being devised by Russia for the detection even of craft lying stopped on the ocean bed, Polaris isn’t anything like as secure as the public imagines. On the other hand, the Bluebolt control-station is almost invisible from the air, right smack in a small jungle clearing, well away from any large target. And there’s a lot of territory in those parts, Shaw, which would need a great number of long-range nuclear missiles to saturate it. It’s not like pinpointing the big targets such as cities or troop concentrations. After all, these I.C.B.M.’s aren’t all that accurate. While the station’s intact, we’re sitting very pretty indeed—it gives us great security and it gives us great influence too. Wonderful for power-bargaining at conferences. We’re relying a lot on it.” Again he levelled the ruler at Shaw, “We don’t want anything to go wrong.”

“Of course not. But do you mean there’s a definite threat developing to the station, sir?”

Latymer smiled and with some sarcasm said, “I always knew you had genius, Shaw. How the devil did you guess, hey? Yes, I think there is. So far, there’s been nothing more than a few straws in the wind, possibly rather vague straws, but I don’t like the general picture, the way things seem to be going. The difficulty is, we’re so utterly in the dark as to hard
facts
. If anyone really knew anything I’d say it was Handley Mason. And he’s dead because of it.” Latymer sat back, pushed a cigarette-box across the desk towards Shaw. The agent, who had been needing a smoke ever since he came in, took one thankfully. He flicked his lighter, held it out to Latymer, and then lit his own. Latymer went on, “All I know is that the natives are being stirred up to something, and that something is—to drive the remaining whites right out of Nogolia, get rid of the Bluebolt station, and negate the treaty under which it was put there in the first place. And—need I add it?—Guess Who’s behind
that!
"

“Quite, sir. But how are they going to go about it? It’s a pretty tall order, surely, when the Nogolian Government themselves are backing us?”

Latymer didn’t answer directly. Instead, he asked, “Have you ever heard of voodoo, Shaw?”

“I’ve heard of it, of course. But—”

“Well, just listen to me for a while.” Latymer leaned forward, his face serious, looking hard at Shaw. “You may not believe in it, but it’s a brave man or a foolish one who denies the tremendous power of voodoo over the native mind, even if he doesn’t believe in it himself. Agree?”

Shaw pursed his lips. He said doubtfully, “I suppose I do, sir.”

“If you don’t,” Latymer informed him shortly, giving an irritable movement of his hand, “you’re a damned fool. It’s hard fact, not supposition. Well now. Africa’s still a land of gods, Shaw, of ju-ju men and black magic, mainly, of course, in the remoter villages up country, but to a considerable extent in the towns as well. Whatever the progress that’s been made, whatever the education programme, the African remains basically the same as he’s always been. He can’t help that, Shaw—he’s been conditioned that way by a thousand years of mystery and sacrifice and pagan beliefs that go back into time itself, beliefs so deep-seated that they can hardly begin to conceive of life without pagan gods and ancient ceremonial rites, and that conditioning process has been drummed into ’em by resident witch-doctors who make damn sure no one deviates! It’s right inside the African, Shaw, in his blood, his bones, his whole mind and outlook.”

“What about the civilized ones, sir?”

Latymer said, “I suppose it’s a truism to repeat that civilization’s only a veneer, and a pretty thin one at that. It can crack almost at a moment’s notice. Take a town like Jinda.” Latymer waved a hand. “Capital of Nogolia, fine modem buildings. Skyscrapers, some of them, built to American designs by American architects and local labour. Electric lifts, air-conditioning, refrigeration—the lot. And almost entirely run by the Nogos themselves now. Place is full of big stores with all the latest gadgets and fashions and all that. The Jindans, or a lot of them, anyway, go around in the local equivalent of the white collar, and they hold down a whole variety of top jobs in the professions and commerce. They govern their own country—on the English model, even now—and they do it very well indeed. They’re good at finance and law and administration and even diplomacy. But they’re still Africans, Shaw. One generation back their fathers were unskilled, underpaid slaves in the copper or tin-mines, or running about bare-arsed in the jungle and living in mud-and-grass huts, making sacrifices to the appropriate gods, under the thumb of the ju-ju man and their very ancient heritage of superstitious god-appeasement. Right?”