Twelve Hours To Destiny (2 page)

Outwardly, the junk looked no different from the thousands of others which milled back and forth in Hong Kong Harbour, but there was one very vital difference. To a practised eye, it would be seen that the vessel lay very low in the water at the bow. But it was utterly out of the question that the British, even if this were noted, would guess at the reason for it. The
reason
was the heavy, recoilless 4.5-inch gun which lay concealed within the bows, a weapon quite capable of blowing a British torpedo boat out of the water with a couple of well-aimed shots.

There was an urgent touch on his arm. Yun Shih-Min pointed out to sea. Narrowing his eyes, Chu Hsi glimpsed the creaming of white bow-foam out in the clear Channel. The torpedo boat was coming up fast, driven under the full power of her mighty engines.

“Warn the gunners to stand by,” he ordered crisply. There was no emotion in his voice.

The creaming bow wave died away to a faint ripple of phosphorescence, the throb of the powerful diesel dying away to a muted murmur as the British boat moved towards him, scarcely more than a hundred yards away now. Chu Hsi saw the gunners standing by on the deck, saw the two officers relaxed near the bow, but not too relaxed. They were prepared for trouble. One of the officers cupped his hands, yelled to them in halting Chinese. It was an order to lower their sail and prepare to be bordered.

Chu Hsi hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then signalled sharply with his right hand. He knew that the small square hatch covering the muzzle of the gun had been removed some ten seconds before, ready for his signal.

Suddenly, from just below the bow of the junk, a red-tipped bolt of flame and smoke lanced out. The sound came a split second later, to be followed by the explosion as the heavy shell smashed into the midships of the torpedo boat. Instinctively, Chu Hsi had hurled himself to the deck. Two more shells followed in rapid succession. From that range, it was utterly impossible to miss. The men on board the British boat died literally without knowing that anything was wrong. The deep echoes faded gradually over the sea. Bits of debris clattered on to the deck of the junk as Chu Hsi pushed himself to his feet. The torpedo boat was going down, sinking fast. She was heavily on fire amidships but the explosions had evidently smashed the bottom out of her and fifteen seconds later, the vessel canted sharply to starboard and slid beneath the surface in a hissing steam, as the fuel tanks erupted just beneath the water.

Twenty minutes later, and two miles further offshore, the sleek shape of the waiting submarine nosed out of the water and the junk was manoeuvred alongside. Chao Lin was stirring into consciousness as he was picked up and lifted on board.

*

Leaning sideways in his seat, Commander Steve Carradine peered through the small square window and watched the filmy clouds reach up and envelop the Viscount as they began to reduce height. The stewardess paused beside his seat, glanced archly down at him.

“Would you fasten your seatbelt, sir.”

Carradine grinned, nodded. Deftly, he clicked the belt shut around his waist, leaned back. The plane lurched momentarily as they hit an air pocket, the note of the engines changed abruptly for a second. The grin stayed on his lips as he watched the girl swaying along the aisle towards the pilot’s cabin, but inwardly, his stomach was in a turmoil. There were only two things he disliked about their travel. Taking off and getting down again. The bit in the middle seldom troubled him, he could somehow managed to forget that he was suspended several thousand feet above solid ground in a steel shell and withdraw his mind into a small, private world. The clouds thinned and he was able to see the chequered fields and lacing roads and then, somewhere ahead, the wide criss-cross of the runways of London airport, with the toy-like control tower a little to one side.

He let his breath go from between his teeth, wished that the red NO SMOKING sign was not showing above the interconnecting door. The Viscount put its sleek nose down towards the distant runway. The shrill whine of the engines deepened. There was a rush of air past the wings and fuselage. Then they were skimming over the countryside. He glimpsed roads and houses just beneath him, then the concrete lane of the runway almost on the same level as the window. A bump as the under carriage wheels touched, a pause and then a further jar. The plane wobbled slightly, then steadied as they touched down.

As he waited for Customs clearance, Carradine tried to figure out why his vacation in Southern France should have been so abruptly ended, why his presence was needed so urgently here in London. God knows his idyllic spells were few and far between. It just wasn’t fair for them to be interrupted in this way.

“All right, Mr. Carradine. You’re clear to go through.” The customs officer nodded across at him, scribbled some unintelligible marking chalk on his two cases and slid them along the counter. He said something to his companion in a low undertone as Carradine picked them up and walked away. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw their curious gaze fixed on him. Shrugging, he left the building, noticed at once the tall man who came in his direction. There was a car parked at the kerb having the non-descript look he always associated with any of the cars used by Military Intelligence.

“I’m to take you direct to Headquarters, sir.” The other took his cases and thrust them into the spacious boot.

Carradine settled himself into the seat, grateful for the space which allowed him to stretch his legs out to the full.

When they were moving smoothly into the stream of traffic, the driver said politely: “Not the best of weather to have to come back to, sir.”

Carradine gave a brief nod. The beating rain which slashed at the windscreens defied the moving fingers of the wipers to do their damnedest to clear it away. The warm, mellow sun of the South of France seemed an eternity away at that moment. “I’ve known better,” he answered morosely.

*

There was no sound in the large room on the fifth floor of the tall building, although the rain and wind still beat down against the glass of the shuttered windows. Carradine met the gaze of the man seated at the desk, noticed the stillness of the face, the coldness in the eyes.

Something was worrying the Old Man immensely, he decided. It was seldom he had seen him as preoccupied as this. The other said in a deceptively soft tone: “Sorry to have to recall you in this abrupt way.” He sat back, resting his hands flat on top of the desk. His tone belied the feeling behind his statement. “You ready to go back to work right away?”

“Why yes, sir.” Carradine nodded. What was coming now, he wondered tensely? More trouble in some obscure corner of the world? Or a humdrum desk job here in the heart of London where nothing ever happened to break the monotony?

“Good.” The other’s tone became abruptly business-like. He pulled the solitary folder towards him, flipped back the stiff cover. Carradine saw that it had been marked with a single red star, indicating that the contents were top-secret. The Chief tapped the folder significantly with his forefinger.

“I’m expecting the Chief of Staff here in five minutes, but before he arrives, I want to put you in the picture as far as this affair is concerned. Our top agent in Hong Kong is a man by the name of Chao Lin. Ostensibly, he heads an export-import business dealing in fabrics. Contact is made with him every Friday night at nineteen hours Hong Kong time. A week ago he failed to acknowledge our call sign and all attempts to raise him have failed.”

“There could be an innocent explanation of this,” Carradine suggested.

“I doubt it.” The Chief shook his head emphatically. “There was no indication from his last message that anything was wrong.”

“What kind of man was he, sir?”

“Extremely conscientious. He was the man who passed on that information about activities around Sinkiang which put us on to their atomic tests. It seems he had discovered something else, something pretty big. He was looking into it and was supposed to send on anything he found as soon as possible.”

“So naturally you suspect that the Communists got on to him first?”

“In a single word—yes. In this job, you get the smell of a thing in your nostrils. This smells bad. As of now, we’re opening a file on Chao Lin. You are assigned to this case. I want you to—” He broke off as a buzzer sounded on his desk and the red light over the door went on. “That will be the Chief of Staff.”

The other came in a moment later, gave Carradine a brief, friendly nod. Carradine had worked with him on several occasions in the past, knew the tall, grey-haired man intimately. Apart from the Chief himself, Benton possibly knew more about the running of Headquarters than anyone else. He was an extremely able man whose rigid military training showed in his erect bearing. Carradine had the impression that at times the other would have willingly exchanged the endless grind of paperwork and responsibility for the kind of life which he himself led.

“Take a pew,” said the Chief, nodding towards a chair. “I’m assigning Carradine to the Hong Kong case. A funny affair to say the best of it.”

“I agree.” Benton glanced sideways at Carradine. “There’s something really big going on in that part of the world and it’s essential that we find out what it is. Chao Lin put us on to the fact that the Chinese were preparing to explode their first nuclear weapon. He’s one of our shrewdest men, not the kind likely to have flights of fancy as some of our men are.”

“You’ve no idea at all what it might be?” Carradine addressed the question to both of them. “A hydrogen bomb, perhaps?”

“It could be,” agreed Benton, lips pursed into a tight line. “Although somehow I doubt it. The construction of such a weapon would be a logical outcome of the experiments we know they’re carrying out. No, I’m positive this is something of a different nature.”

“In the last message but one, he mentioned that there were hints the Chinese were working on a secret weapon.” The Chief’s voice was tightly controlled. “Whatever it is that is going on in the enemy camp, we must have information on it as soon as possible. I understand that you underwent an intensive course in Chinese two years ago. How did it turn out?”

“It isn’t a language you pick up very readily,” Carradine said, a trifle defensively. “Not like Russian.”

“I realise that you are perfectly fluent in Russian,” said the Chief testily. “I’m interested at the moment in whether you can speak and understand sufficient Chinese to enable you to pass as one.”

“No.” Carradine shook his head decisively. “I doubt if there are more than a handful of Westerners who do.”

“That is the answer I expected.” The other showed no sign of surprise. “It’s therefore quite obvious you will need a cover when you go there and unfortunately that is not going to be easy.” He stared sombrely at Carradine. His face was grim.

“Look,” Carradine begged. “I’m completely lost at the moment. If I’m merely to discover what has happened to Chao Lin and try to unearth the information he had stumbled on, I shall presumably be operating inside Hong Kong and surely I can—”

“You’re wrong,” interrupted the other harshly. “That isn’t what you’re to do at all. Hong Kong will merely be your jumping-off point. All of the evidence points to Chao Lin having been kidnapped and taken by junk, or submarine, to China. That will be your ultimate objective. To find where Chao Lin is being held, get him back, together with this vital information he has, and also carry out any further actions you may think fit.”

So that was it! That was the reason he had been recalled so abruptly from his holiday in the south of France.

Before he could say anything further, Benton chimed in with: “You may be wondering how we can be so sure that Chao Lin is now inside Communist China. The brief answer is that on the same evening as Chao Lin was scheduled to contact us as usual, one of our torpedo boats, patrolling the waters off Hong Kong harbour was attacked and sunk by a Chinese junk.”

“By a junk?”

“Exactly. Not the sort of thing one would expect to happen. But there was one survivor from the torpedo boat. He was picked up two hours later, clinging to a piece of driftwood, more dead than alive. We had him flown back to England as soon as he was well enough to be moved. You interrogated him, Chief of Staff. You can tell Carradine his story better than I.”

Benton sat forward on the edge of his chair. “There isn’t much to tell,” he began. “Apparently this junk was sighted heading away from the harbour just after dark, acting in a highly suspicious manner. Naturally, it was thought they were dope smugglers. There’s been plenty of that going on in the past few years. Just a routine search, they thought. What they hadn’t bargained for was a concealed heavy-calibre gun in the bow of the junk. It took only three shells to sink the torpedo boat within minutes. They never had a chance to fight back.”

“Good Lord.” Carradine tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “So they really mean business.”

“That is an understatement. Somehow, they must have tumbled to Chao Lin. The fact that all of this must have been planned in advance with the precision of a military mission gives us an indication of how seriously they took him as a threat to their security. Evidently they had to get him out of Hong Kong without anyone knowing. Thousands of men vanish without trace from Hong Kong and no one bothers about it. As far as the authorities there are concerned, one man is just another of those faceless thousands. We shall, of course, let them continue to think that way.”