Redcap (4 page)

Shaw turned away, put up his gun, and wiped his streaming face with the sleeve of his jacket. He was drenched through and through with sweat, and not only from that intense heat; he was trembling, his legs felt weak, as though they were about to crumple, and there was a dreadful nausea rising up inside him. He found he was cursing savagely, blaspheming against the Outfit and against Latymer, against the whole set of circumstances which had forced him into this kind of game in the first place. He felt no pity for those men, for they had killed John Donovan—but the manner of their death revolted him.

Then he ran back to the Renault and slid into the driving seat. Debonnair was in the back with Judith. He heard the girl sobbing. Debonnair leaned forward, asked tensely: “Well?”

“Nothing living.”

She nodded, reached out and put a hand on his cheek,

gently, understandingly. She said, “That arm, Esmonde. You’re hurt.”

“It’s nothing much.”

“I’m going to put something on it, anyway.” She added, “Don’t look.”

Obediently he sat there; he heard a rustling as Debonnair stripped off some of her clothing, heard the ripping of fabric. She said, “Can you get your coat off?”

“I think so.” He got out into the road, and she came to help him. She rolled up his shirt-sleeve. It wasn’t a bad wound, but it was bleeding quite a lot. Tightly she bound it up, asked: “Want me to go on driving?”

He shook his head. “I’ll manage. Get in the back with Judith, there’s a good girl. Do what you can for her, Deb.”

“Of course.” They got back in, and as he started up Shaw tried not to listen to the girl’s desperate crying, to the sobs which were shaking her body as she lay in Debonnair’s arms. He put his whole mind to his driving and he sent the Renault flat out for Paris, the Faubourg St Honoré , and the British Embassy.

Within a few hours of reaching the Embassy and after a bath, a change of clothing, breakfast, and the attentions of a doctor for his arm and back, Shaw and the two girls were getting off the B.E.A. flight at Heathrow and then the car was whisking them along cleared roads to the Admiralty. Thompson, the short, sturdy ex-petty officer who had once been Latymer’s coxswain in a seagoing ship, was driving; alongside him was a second driver. As the car skirted West Kensington, Thompson altered course, went along Gliddon Road to Shaw’s own flat.

The second man moved into the driving-seat as the girls got out with Thompson. Shaw said, “I know you've got your orders, Thompson. Don’t let ’em out of your sight.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Thompson answered briskly. “I’ll stick like a leech, sir.”

“Good man! Thanks.” Shaw leaned back on the cushions as the car moved off, speeding for Whitehall. On arrival at the Horse Guards Shaw was taken straight up to Miss Larkin’s office in the old Admiralty building, and there he found himself looking once again at the inner door with that white card bearing the simple and misleading inscription:

 Mr G. E. D. Latymer.

Shaw was one of the very few people who knew that this name hid the identity of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Charteris, K.C.B., D.S.O. and two bars, D.S.C., supposedly deceased; Shaw was one of the few who had worked with the Admiral in the old days, and so was privileged, as few others were privileged, to take his orders direct from the Old Man himself. Mr Under-Secretary Latymer, as the Service departments officially knew Sir Henry Charteris these days—just a very senior civil servant doing a humdrum job in routine intelligence—which, on the surface, he was. But Latymer was in fact Chief of Special Services, Naval Intelligence Division—that very hush-hush organization within an organization—and thus in effect head of the structure known colloquially as the ‘Outfit,’ the great organization which even in these days of a declining seagoing navy had feelers reaching sometimes beyond the confines of purely Admiralty business and stretching to the ends of the earth; and whenever Shaw stood outside that door at the start of a mission, the pain in his guts was at its worst.

This was the doorway to so many killings and assignments and past memories.

Latymer was standing at the big double windows of his room, glaring out across Horse Guards Parade towards Westminster. His oval face was expressionless—expressionless because of those massive skin grafts which, after the bomb had gone off so many years ago in his Eaton Square flat, had altered his appearance sufficiently to make possible his change of identity —a change which had in fact been essential if he was to retain his usefulness once he had become a marked man. Now, despite the lack of expression, he was clearly troubled. Very troubled. He stood, breathing heavily through his nose, his hands clasped behind his thick back, heavy shoulders braced very square, body rising and falling gently on his toes. He always stood like that, as though he was still on his quarterdeck, or was moving to the lift of a cruiser’s bridge in a seaway. Like Shaw himself, the Old Man would have given anything to have returned to sea, to have lived out his active life as the sailor he had been trained from boyhood to be. But, again like Shaw himself, he was far too valuable to be returned to general service, even had there been enough ships at sea to sustain his high-ranking presence afloat.

His heels came down finally and he slewed round, marched back towards his desk, the big, leather-topped desk which was always kept so highly polished that he could see his face in the old, time-worn shagreen surface. As he approached there was a subdued buzz and a red bobble of glass glowed for three seconds precisely in a small contraption on the right-hand side of the desk-top. Latymer sat down, reached for a switch, and depressed it all in one rhythmic movement.

Miss Larkin’s precise, impersonal voice—the voice upon which, Latymer sometimes impishly thought, he could almost see the sensible spectacles—floated into the room. “Commander Shaw is here, Mr Latymer.”

“Tell him to come in.”

The tone was quiet, but curt and hard. As the switch flicked back, the door opened. No one had ever kept Latymer waiting . . . he gave a tight, very fleeting smile, got to his feet as Shaw entered, and stretched out to take the agent’s hand. His sharp glance flickered over Shaw, took in the injured arm, the sleeve which was bulged out by the bandage. He asked, “Had a bad spin already?”

“It’s all right now, sir.”

“Answer the question, blast you!”

Shaw flushed a little. “Yes, sir.”

Latymer’s green eyes narrowed, looked at him keenly once more. “It’s not going to affect your mobility?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Because you’re going to get pretty mobile shortly.” Latymer sat heavily, big hands splayed, finger-tips hooked over the ends of his chair-arms. He gestured towards a leather study chair facing his desk. “Now—sit down and tell me the whole thing from the beginning.”

“There’s not very much to tell, sir, beyond what I said on the phone.” Shaw sat down. He went right through the night’s events, leaving nothing out; and when he had finished, Latymer got up again and crossed the room slowly, going over to the window. After a while he spoke with his back to Shaw.

He said, “Of course, I’ve known for some time that Donovan was alive.”

Shaw felt a sense of shock. “You have, sir?”

“Information did come through to that effect, yes. If you’re wondering why I never told you, Shaw, the answer is simply this: you would have wanted to try to clear him —and I can assure you it would have meant the end for Donovan if the fact that he was alive had been publicized. Many people in this country and in Norway were determined to get him, you know—that’s just one of the difficulties I’m up against now, as a matter of fact. I’ll explain more in a moment. Meanwhile, what about the women?”

“Left in my flat as you told me, sir.” Shaw hesitated.

“They won’t talk to anyone. The Donovan girl—or Dangan, that’s the name she uses now, it was her mother’s maiden name, I saw it on her passport—she risked a lot to get word through to me. She won’t take any chances of messing things up now.”

Latymer turned, walked back to his desk and sat down. He said, “Of course. And your Miss Delacroix is perfectly all right. I know that.” He frowned. “It’s not that that I’m worried about. Trouble is, I’ll have to put a man on ’em from now on. They know just as much as you, don’t they? They may be interfered with.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll have to question the Donovan girl, of course.”

Shaw said, “She doesn’t know anything, sir. I did try to question her myself, after we’d been to the Embassy, and all she knew was what she told me before we met her father. I’m sure she’s speaking the truth.” He paused, then added: “She’s very upset, sir, naturally. I think she’s had all she can take, at any rate for a day or so.”

Latymer made a growling sound and shifted irritably. He said, “I suppose you’re right. Donovan wouldn’t have told her anything important, certainly. Anyway—forget the women for a while, Shaw.” He pushed across a heavy silver cigarette-box. Shaw took a cigarette and Latymer flicked a desk lighter. As Shaw bent towards the tiny flame he glanced up briefly at his chief. He thought, in that moment, that he’d never seen the Old Man look so serious before. And no wonder.

Latymer sat back, puffing at his cigarette. A cloud of blue smoke wreathed his face. He said abruptly, “Tell me, Shaw. Are you personally quite convinced that Donovan was telling the truth as he knew it?”

“As he knew it, sir, yes. Undoubtedly. I knew him very well. He
always
made certain. That was his chief characteristic—absolute certainty. But his source! That does worry me. Why on earth should Karstad of all people suddenly develop a solicitude for
us?
”

“Well, quite. But we just don’t know. Personally, like you, I’m prepared to take Donovan’s word—and the explanation of Karstad’s part in it, was no doubt in what Donovan hadn’t time to say.” He added, “I always felt as sure as you that Donovan had been framed. I’d have trusted him anywhere. Still do.”

Shaw nodded. “What do you think all this means?” he asked.

Latymer’s eyes were half closed now. He said slowly, “I’m not sure. I don’t like the fact that China seems to be involved—I draw that inference from what Donovan said about the feeling between Russia and China, and also from certain other news I had only yesterday—I’ll come back to that in    a moment. I know there’s not a great deal to go on, but we     can’t afford to take any chances at all in my opinion. I’m trying to have Karstad located so that we can get the rest of the message, but there’s been no luck so far and I’m not hopeful. He’s probably very shy of contacting an officially accredited agent of the West, even of his own people. We all know his record, even if has managed to get away with it.” Latymer jabbed his cigarette towards Shaw. “Meanwhile, if this threat, whatever it is, is genuine, there’s any God’s amount of trouble ahead. I suppose you realize just how damn hot this MAPIACCIND thing is?” He leaned forward, tapped his hand on the desk in emphasis. “If just one thing goes badly wrong, the world’ll lose confidence— and that’ll virtually mean the end of the agreement. You know how suspicious every one is basically. It’s quite vital to maintain implicit belief in MAPIACCIND. That’s paramount.”

“I know that, sir.” Shaw was well aware of the dangers. MAPIACCIND had come about as a concrete extension of the old Western European Union and as the result of nearly three years of mostly acrimonious discussion, largely in closed session, in Geneva—discussion which had taken place almost in desperation latterly because of a rapidly deteriorating world political climate following upon the failure of the earlier Big Four talks and the collapse of the A-test ban. Subsequently Britain, U.S.A., France, and Russia had been joined as nuclear Powers by both Western and Eastern Germany, Italy and China, while Canada and Australia as well as some smaller second-flight Powers, had also developed their own independent nuclear programme and were well equipped with H-bombs. As a direct result of this increase in the nuclear club, sheer naked fright throughout the world had led to a welcome display of common sense and a resumption of talks, talks which had been wholly and surprisingly successful: all these countries were now founder-members of the MAPIACCIND Agreement and were thus subject to a rigid control by the International Inspectorate set up by MAPIACCIND’s World Headquarters at Geneva. This Inspectorate was responsible for ensuring, by aerial reconnaissance as well as by on-the-spot examination by the MAPIACCIND teams in the member-nations’ territories, that stocks of nuclear devices of a warlike character were confined to those existing at the time of the signing of the agreement. There was in addition the other, and overriding, safeguard: all the nations concerned had agreed to have their own nuclear stockpiles so co-ordinated and adapted that they were no longer capable of independent use; these stockpiles had been placed under guards of MAPIACCIND teams, whose leaders held certain keys and controls; the stocks themselves were linked by radio to one central control point known as REDCAP—Radio Regular Equipment for Defence Co-Ordination, Atom Powers. Radio signals, transmitted on extremely high frequencies from REDCAP, could, subject to certain checks, operate receivers on the stockpiles themselves, and these receivers would detonate primers, which would in turn blow up the entire nuclear potential of any nation showing signs of intended aggression. Naturally it was never visualized that this extreme measure would ever actually be put into effect; it was very much a last resort, and it was hoped that the threat alone would suffice, that no country would be insane enough to court the devastating risk entailed by any act of aggression, that wars had for ever ceased to be a possibility. REDCAP was in fact the ultimate and terrible deterrent.

Latymer was going on: “After your call came through, I sought an audience with the Minister.” His voice was tight, angry. “And ‘sought an audience’ is the right term. That little man is really quite impossible to deal with.” He shrugged. “However . . . Now, the first thing that occurred to me was that, considering Donovan said Lubin had been gone some time, it was odd that the Russians had never, so far as we knew, appeared to be in a stew over his disappearance. So a call was put through at once to the Kremlin, at a very high level indeed. And what d’you think the Kremlin said?” Latymer leaned forward, hands flat on the desk. “They said Lubin’s still in Russia, but he’s been a very sick man for a long time and he’s living in retirement on an isolated farm in the Voronezh area.”