The bundle immediately quietened and Grant relaxed for the first time since he had discovered the microphone. ‘Where now?’ he asked.
Chang again tapped a pinch of snuff on to the back of his thumb-nail and sniffed luxuriously into each nostril. ‘Grimsby, I think,’ he said. ‘I have a small ship there at present, Formosa Lily, and he’ll be in good hands once we get him aboard.’
‘How about Customs and dock police?’
Chang laughed politely. ‘Take me to Grimsby and you’ll find out.’
It was late twilight when they reached the dock gates and Grant paused beside the policeman on duty. ‘Formosa Lily,’ he said, pointing towards the single black funnel of Chang’s ship rising a few hundred yards behind the nets and masts of fishing-boats.
The officer looked casually into the back where Chang was sitting like a mandarin, and holding his diplomatic passport. ‘Straight ahead, sir, and first on the right.’
‘You see, my friend,’ purred Chang. ‘Having the right papers makes such a difference to everything.’
Grant stopped below a crane loading ingots of steel from Scunthorpe and waited whilst Chang went aboard. Less than five minutes later two Chinese seamen opened a hatch on the side of the ship at dock level and walked briskly across to the car.
‘Captain’s compliments, sir, and you come aboard, pliz.’
Lighting a miniature cigar he walked up the gangplank, and following a cabin boy joined the ship’s master in the owner’s state-room. ‘I suppose to take this spy of ours overseas,’ said Chang. ‘Clearly he can’t be allowed to report back to his own people. Equally clearly we must try to find out who these people are. Agreed?’
Grant relaxed into the deep lounge chair and sipped a glass of rice wine. ‘I’d like to know what he says.’
Chang pointed to the master. ‘The Captain here will cover that angle. He is an expert at making reluctant prisoners talk and when he is finished he’ll send me a radiograph in my own code.’
‘And then look after this fellow until he is released with apologies in Formosa, I suppose,’ drawled Grant.
Chang’s lips were drawn tight. ‘If he gets there. But, of course, anything can happen on a long voyage round the world. Anyhow,’ he added, ‘we’ve got to make him talk and then I shall personally decide what to do with him.’
‘Do the others have no say?’
Chang shook his head. His expression was inscrutable. ‘Let us understand one another, David Grant. Our friend Sir Jonah is a brave man with lots of good intentions, but he is a little old now for this sort of business and it will be a kindness not to worry him too much about a person like this.’
‘And the American?’
‘John G. Alvis, Junior, is my friend and I like him very much. But he is a little conventional.’
‘And do I have any say?’
Chang shook his head. ‘None at all.’
‘And if I don’t join you?’
‘That would be a pity.’
‘For whom. Your organisation or myself?’
‘You called me an Asiatic tyrant, and I am an Asiatic tyrant, although for the moment any interests are identical with the West,’ said Chang. ‘But tyrants don’t like to be thwarted, and they don’t like to take risks which can be avoided. So if you refuse our offer of employment I would always wonder just how well you were keeping our secrets.’
‘In which case you would be happier if I also went for a voyage round the world.’
‘Frankly yes. If that happened I think you would be better dead.’
Grant laughed in spite of himself. ‘I’ll let you know in a couple of days. And I give you my word of honour that your secrets will be safe enough until then.’
Chang’s manner was more than usually bland. ‘Honour doesn’t arise in affairs like this. Only two things matter. Secrecy and success.’
The ship’s master returned whilst he was speaking and reported in rapid sing-song Cantonese. ‘Our prisoner is now aboard,’ said Chang translating. ‘So we can leave him to my captain whilst we return to Lyveden Hall.’
Grant decided to play chauffeur to the end and drove Chang back to the door of the house. Lights were blazing in the drawing-room and someone had started up a record-player. There was a click of balls from the billiard-room and the shadow of two couples dancing in the background. Chang carefully adjusted his tie and sleeked back his thinning hair. ‘When you are making up your mind about our proposition, Doctor, just remember this: that with your skill and our resources you may be able to give our enemies a blow of such severity that their entire tactical thinking towards the West might be completely altered. Especially,’ he added softly, ‘since neither you nor I are bothered by any of these humane and gentlemanly instincts which handicap most statesmen in the Free World.’
Grant opened the passenger door. ‘On your way, sir. But you can also remember something. I don’t respond much to either threats or discipline and if I join you it’ll be on my own terms.’
Chang tipped out a final pinch of snuff and sniffed it lingeringly. ‘Asiatic tyrants dictate their own terms, David Grant. And when a man is steeped in blood another few drops don’t matter very much. Think it over, will you?’
Chapter Seven – A highly secret weapon
Grant reported back for duty seven weeks after he had last cleared his desk and set out for Moscow. Four weeks of leave and three on the sick list! He guessed that the Admiral would have taken a poor view of his escapade, and he would have to mind more than his P’s and Q’s before the powers-that-be gave him the all-clear to follow up a story which he now regarded as his own by right of having blundered into it before anyone else. But the Americans were sticklers for efficiency, and he had bungled the Sokolnikov angle. The whole affair lacked finesse and too many wires had hummed between the British F.O. and SHAPE enquiring why he had involved the Embassy. Two unwritten rules of the service had been broken, when he had used an official car to get out of a private jam, and when he had mixed up his personal life with security issues.
Traces of fog hanging around the river and an early autumn frost did nothing to help his temper. A nerve had been bruised by Sokolnikov’s attack in the National and the cold could still make his arm ache, whilst tingling sensations still twitched his fingers as he left the Quai des Grands Augustin and was jostled by a crowd of giggling teenagers at the corner of Rue Dauphine.
The morning flight had been delayed by smog at London Airport and he was tight for time. Quickening his step he crossed the Boul. St. Germain and pointed towards Rue Vaugirard to the 18th-century, nondescript-looking house which is still headquarters of the recently-established security department of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Not even Grant knew who had conceived the idea, although it had been obvious from the beginning that a streamlined intelligence service would, one day, become an indispensable part of N.A.T.O.’s growing equipment. The first intimation of a change of direction in his own career had been an abrupt recall from Katanga and the curt notification that he had been posted from U.N.O. to SHAPE as Deputy-Adviser Medical Aspects Physical Survival. But a few days later Sir Jonah Lyveden had given him a final briefing. As he had suspected, the job was to be used as a conventional cover against the things which really mattered, and he had travelled to Paris almost smug with satisfaction that he had become Lyveden’s nominee, which meant Britain’s representative, on the staff of the most heavily protected intelligence service in the world. A combination of American know-how and money, British tradition and experience, Western European finesse, and overall access to some of the best brains in the world, would build, he was certain, a team second to nothing. And it would be a contrast to the set-up with which he was familiar at home, experts hamstrung by the Treasury and trying to run global enterprises on a frayed shoestring.
But after two years not even Grant himself knew how many other agents were employed. Secrecy was absolute. No one outside of a tight circle of top-level statesmen even knew of the d
epartment’s existence. He suspected that at least two sovereign nations within the Alliance itself had not been entrusted with the secret, and certainly the most elementary knowledge of its machinery and achievements remained more than Highly Confidential to all excepting a few Heads of State and the Director-General. His cover posting carried with it nominal duties within a plush office, and one of the most exciting secretaries he had ever known, Jacqueline, a French girl of scintillating charm and absolutely no morals whatsoever. But he only saw the Admiral by appointment, and then only at the Maison Candide, miles away from H.Q. and blended with the lovely houses of Rue Casette.
Maison Candide had a long history, and its gardens were old when some of the butchery of the 1792 September massacres overflowed from the grounds of the Carmelite Convent, now the Catholic Institute, into the privileged serenity of private mansions beyond. Thereafter it had, successively, been a revolutionary court-house for the Sixth arrondissement, a brothel, a block of flats, and finally, after the Nazi occupation of Paris, a suite of government offices. These had quietly been taken over by Admiral Cooper when, in 1958, he was charged with the responsibility for establishing an Administrative Department controlling Security measures relating to Attack and Defence, and by 1960, when Grant became a staff member, ADSAD had become one of N.A.T.O.’s top-secret weapons. In one of his rare, talkative moods the Admiral had admitted that without advance information collected by his department the Cuban crisis would have flared into open war during ’62. He believed that ADSAD alone had been responsible for convincing certain reluctant governments of their need to accept Polaris missile bases in the West, and that the sum total of accumulated information gathered by his men had been the deciding factor in framing current American, British and French foreign policy.
Departmental technique was controlled by every lesson learned from a concentrated study of methods followed by America’s Central Intelligence Agency—The C.I.A., by the French Maquis, the Gestapo, and Britain’s M.I.5, and the Admiral did not allow his right hand to trust his left. A remark to Grant at his first interview showed how his mind worked. ‘A secret ceases to be a secret when one other person knows about it. You will be like the three monkeys, seeing, hearing and saying nothing which is not exclusively your own business. Outside of your official cover posting you will be lonely. Probably you’ll often be scared sick. Only two persons here know about you apart from myself. One is my secretary and you’ll accept orders from her exactly as though they came direct from me. If I want you a message will be left at your office. It will give only day and hour. All meetings will be held in this house. The concièrge is the most reliable man on our establishment and the only one, apart from myself . . . and my secretary, of course . . . who knows everyone on my staff.’
It was the longest personal speech Grant ever heard the old man make. Taciturn, humane, blunt and dead shrewd he never risked a word which would give himself away or offer a clue to the brilliant mind which lay within that taut, wrinkled body. He was the ideal man for the job. A third generation American with a deep knowledge of Europe and its temperamental statesmen: possessing a natural gift for language and that intangible thing which spells unquestioned leadership. A man of colossal drive and physical energy, and a Chief who was content with only the best from his men.
But he took some knowing, thought Grant, as he turned into the house and passed the concièrge’s office. A panel of one-way glass allowed the watchdog to see without being seen and Grant’s neck prickled slightly, as it always did when he felt these invisible eyes staring at him from the drab little box beside the elevator.
Irritated, he forced himself to close the doors quietly and pressed the button for the fifth floor. A new carpet had been laid on the corridor to the office and a green light was flashing above the door.
He opened without knocking. Miss Sidders, the Admiral’s secretary, was waiting for him, a stout, motherly-looking woman of about sixty who frowned severely as they shook hands.
‘Why can’t you keep out of trouble, Doctor? That Moscow business still isn’t finished even now and your British Foreign Office is very annoyed indeed.’ Her voice was gentle, but her eyes were like flint, and for the hundredth time he tried to place her accent. At times there was a slight southern drawl which suggested America. And then some turn of speech or other would hint at England or Germany. Nor did her appearance give anything away, steel-grey hair and a faded complexion, short capable fingers and a bulging figure disguised by a shapeless dress dropping to well below the knees.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said seriously. ‘It was badly handled. But I’ve got some fairly hot news by way of compensation.’
She continued to hold his hand like a vice, her fingers cold and impersonal whilst she stared deep into his eyes. ‘We are very annoyed with you because your foolishness has probably made the Russians study you with more care than we would like. It is even possible that they may trace you back to this house, so if you are sent for again you will take extra special care to see that no one is tailing you.’
‘I never thought of that.’ Grant’s voice was deadpan.
‘No?’ Miss Sidders dropped his hand as though it were a hot cinder. ‘You have been behaving like an amateur. Two men followed you from the airport this morning and when our people saw that you lacked the sense to take even the most elementary precautions they took action themselves.’
Grant flushed slightly. ‘We all make mistakes.’
‘Not in this department, Doctor.’ Her voice was still soft but her words were edged with menace. ‘The type of men we employ don’t make any mistakes. When they do they are transferred to places where they can do no harm to themselves or other people. Do I make myself clear?’
Grant nodded. ‘I can only say that I’m sorry.’
She shook her head impatiently. ‘You can also show that you are sorry, and your future will depend a great deal on how you handle matters from now on.’
He glanced at his wrist watch. ‘At least I arrived on time. Does the Admiral know I’m here?’
Miss Sidders smiled coldly. ‘Begging for mercy, are you? Very well. But no more mistakes.’
The Admiral’s room was unchanged. The same dove-grey carpet and dark green leather chairs, the teak desk and pipe-rack, an assortment of old Virginian prints on the same cold white walls and a roasting fire burning in the hearth which warmed the room with that glowing magic which can never come from central heating or radiators. The old man was puffing stolidly at his pipe and relaxed behind his desk with one hand on his chin. ‘Morning. Feeling fit?’
‘And glad to be back.’
‘Any news?’
Grant opened his briefcase and handed over the reel of tape. He had half expected Chang to ask for it, but events had moved so swiftly that he had probably thought it was still in Lyveden Hall when they separated. ‘This will tell you the full story, sir. We all spoke pretty frankly after luncheon without knowing that the room had been wired for sound. This was recorded in a pantry by one of the new staff taken on for the house-party, but we got on to him in time and now he’s an unwilling passenger aboard one of Chang Hung’s ships presently loading at Grimsby. He had no time to report progress or otherwise to his superiors and this is the only known record of what was said during a very interesting discussion.’
The Admiral threw the switch of his intercom. ‘Voice box, Miss Sidders.’
He sat motionless whilst Grant helped her connect it up on the desk and then fit on the reel. As the voices began to come through he pointed to a chair. ‘Relax, son. And you, Miss Sidders, get another tape made from this whilst it’s running. Better with a spare.’
Grant switched off the motor and waited whilst the woman adjusted the mike of their own machine.
The Admiral pointed again to the chair. ‘Sit down. And you too, Miss Sidders.’
Reception had been good, although uneven in parts, but probably not more than forty or fifty words had been slurred or lost. There was a complete picture
of everything which had happened right up to the moment when the fight had taken place. Grant even heard the gasping breath of the house-boy and the rough slither of his feet on the linoleum as he slid to the floor, unconscious. The message ended with his own deep voice speaking to Chang.
‘We-e-ll.’ The Admiral leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. And then he stared at Grant through hooded lids which glinted with interest. ‘Very good, David. Even as things are it will be difficult enough for you if you do return to Moscow. But if that lot had reached base you wouldn’t have a dog’s chance.’
Grant stiffened at the tone of his voice. The old man was going to start something.
‘Fill up the blanks and tell me how you got rid of the body this time?’
‘There was no body,’ drawled Grant smoothly. ‘He was simply unconscious.’ Succinctly he reported events right until he had separated from Chang at Lyveden Hall, his unconscious gift for mimicry building up a perfect picture of the Chinaman as he went over their conversation.
The Admiral watched him impersonally, his sensitive ears attuned to every inflection of Grant’s voice as he re-lived the dialogue. ‘So you parted from Chang on bad terms.’
‘I don’t think so. It was a sort of battle of wills and I think he was fishing to see how I’d react to a threat.’
‘So, as a talking point, how should this be handled?’ The Admiral’s manner was non-committal but Grant realised that much would depend on his reply. Make one blunder and someone else would be given the assignment.
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