The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Balls,’ said Carey. ‘You’d cut the damned thing in two.’

  ‘My God!’ said Denison. That’s a death ray.’ He frowned. ‘Could it be made powerful enough?’

  ‘Lasers have come a long way since the first one,’ said McCready soberly. ‘They don’t use the flash any more on the big ones—they pour in the power with a rocket engine. Already they’re up to millions of horse power—but it’s still ordinary light. With X-rays you could knock a satellite out of orbit from the ground.’

  ‘Now do you understand the significance?’ asked Carey. When Denison nodded, he said, ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  There was a long silence while Denison thought. Carey stood up and went to the window where he looked across to the Studenterlunden, his fingers drumming on the window sill. McCready lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head, and inspected the ceiling closely.

  Denison stirred and unclasped his fingers. He straightened in his chair and stretched his arms, then he sighed deeply. My name is Harry Meyrick,’ he said.

  THIRTEEN

  Three days later Denison, descending for breakfast, bought a newspaper at the kiosk in the lobby and scanned it over coffee. Diana Hansen joined him, and said, ‘What’s new?’

  He shrugged. ‘The world is still going to hell in a handcart. Listen to this. Item one. Two more skyjackings, one successful and one not. In the unsuccessful one—God save the mark—two passengers were killed. Item two—pollution. A tanker collision in the Baltic and a fifteen mile oil slick is drifting on to Gotland; the Swedes are understandably acid. Item three. There are strikes in Britain, France and Italy, with consequent riots in London, Paris and Milan. Item four…’ He raised his head. ‘…do you want me to go on?’

  She sipped her coffee. ‘You sound a bit acid yourself.’

  ‘Just how would you feel in my circumstances?’ he asked a little grimly.

  Diana shrugged. ‘Where’s Lyn?’

  ‘The young sleep late.’

  ‘I have a feeling she’s sharpening her claws, getting ready to scratch my eyes out,’ said Diana meditatively. ‘She’s made one or two odd remarks lately.’ She stretched over and patted Denison’s hand. ‘She thinks her daddy is getting into bad company.’

  ‘How right the child is.’

  ‘Child!’ Diana raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s only eight years younger than I am. She’s no child—she’s a healthy young woman with all her wits about her—so watch your step.’

  Denison put his head on one side. ‘Of course!’ he said, somewhat surprised. Privately he thought that Diana was drawing the longbow a bit. He put her age at thirty-two which probably meant she was thirty-four; that would give her twelve years on Lyn, not much less than the fourteen years he had himself.

  ‘Carey wants to see you,’ said Diana. ‘If you leave the hotel, turn left and walk about three hundred yards, you’ll come to a place where they’re building a memorial or something. Be around there at ten o’clock.’

  ‘All right,’ said Denison.

  ‘And here’s your darling daughter.’ Diana raised her voice. ‘Good morning, Lyn.’

  Denison turned and smiled appreciatively at Lyn’s chic appearance. It’s the money that makes the difference, he thought; the grand ideas of the rulers of the fashion world are apt to look tatty when filtered through the salary of a junior London typist. ‘Did you have a good night?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Lyn lightly, and sat down. ‘I didn’t expect to see you at breakfast, Mrs Hansen.’ She glanced sideways at Denison. ‘Did you sleep in the hotel last night?’

  ‘No, darling,’ said Diana sweetly. ‘I brought a message for your father.’

  Lyn poured coffee. ‘What are we doing today?’

  ‘I have a business appointment this morning,’ said Denison. ‘Why don’t you two go shopping?’

  A shadow briefly crossed Lyn’s face, but she said, ‘All right.’ Diana’s answering smile was sickly in its sweetness.

  Denison found Carey with his rump buttressed by a coping stone and his back to the Royal Palace. He looked up at Denison’s approach and said brusquely, ‘We’re ready to move. Are you fit?’

  Carey nodded. ‘How are you getting on with the girl?’

  ‘I’m tired of being Daddy,’ said Denison bitterly. ‘I’m only getting through by the skin of my teeth. She asks the damnedest questions.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘A nice kid in danger of being spoiled rotten—but for one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Her parents were divorced and it’s messed up her life. I’m beginning to realize what an unmitigated bastard Harry Meyrick is.’ He paused. ‘Or was.’ He looked at Carey. ‘Any news?’

  Carey flapped his hand in negation. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, the mother is a rich bitch who ignores the girl. I don’t think Lyn would care if she dropped dead tomorrow. But Lyn has always had a respect for her father; she doesn’t like him but she respects him. She looks up to him like a…like a sort of God.’ Denison rubbed his chin and said meditatively, ‘I suppose people respect God, but do they really like him? Anyway, every time she tries to get near Meyrick he slaps her down hard. That’s no way to bring up a daughter and it’s been breaking her up.’

  ‘I never did like his arrogance myself,’ said Carey. ‘It’s the one thing that would have given you away in the end. You’re not bloody-minded enough to be Meyrick.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Denison.

  ‘But you get on with her all right? As Meyrick?’

  Denison nodded. ‘So far—but no future guarantees.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about her,’ said Carey. ‘Suppose we took her to Finland—what would the opposition think?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ said Denison disgustedly.

  ‘Think about it, man,’ Carey urged. ‘They’d check on her, and when they find out who she is they’d be bloody flummoxed. They might think that if you’re good enough to deceive Meyrick’s daughter you’re good enough to deceive me.’

  Denison was acid. ‘That’s not far short of the mark. I had to tell you who I was.’

  ‘You can do it,’ said Carey. ‘It adds a bit of confusion, and there’s nothing like confusion for creating opportunity. Right now we need all the luck we can create for ourselves. Will you ask her if she’ll go with you to Helsinki tomorrow?’

  Denison was troubled. ‘It’s all right for me,’ he said. ‘I’m going into this with my eyes open—but she’s being conned. Will you guarantee her safety?’

  ‘Of course I will. She’ll be as safe as though she were in England.’

  It was a long time before Denison made his decision. ‘All right,’ he said resignedly. ‘I’ll ask her.’

  Carey slapped him lightly on the arm. ‘Which brings us back to Meyrick’s character. As you said—he’s a right bastard. Bear that in mind when you’re handling her.’

  ‘You want her in Finland,’ said Denison. ‘I don’t. If I really act like her father she’s going to run and hide like she always has. Do you want that?’

  ‘I can’t say I do,’ said Carey. ‘But lean too far the other way and she’ll know you’re not Meyrick.’

  Denison thought of the many ways in which he had hurt Lyn by his apparent forgetfulness. As in the case of her mascot, for instance; he had idly picked it up and asked what it was. ‘But you know,’ said Lyn in astonishment. He had incautiously shaken his head, and she burst out, ‘But you named him.’ There was a hurt look in her eyes. ‘You called him Thread-Bear.’

  He laughed sourly. ‘Don’t worry; I’m hurting her enough just by being myself.’

  ‘It’s settled then,’ said Carey. ‘You have an appointment at Helsinki University tomorrow afternoon with Professor Pentti Kääriänen. Your secretary arranged it.’

  ‘Who the devil is he?’

  ‘He was one of Hannu Merikken’s assistants before the war. You are to introduce yourself as Merikken’s son and
pump him about what Merikken was doing in his laboratory from 1937 to 1939. I want to find out if there’s been any other leakage about his X-ray researches.’ He paused. ‘Take the girl with you; it adds to your cover.’

  ‘All right.’ Denison gave Carey a level look. ‘And her name is Lyn. She’s not a bloody puppet; she’s a human being.’

  Carey’s answering stare was equally unblinking. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ he said.

  Carey watched Denison walk away and waited until he was joined by McCready. He sighed. ‘Sometimes I have moments of quiet desperation.’

  McCready suppressed a smile. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘See those buildings over there?’

  McCready looked across the road. ‘That scrubby lot?’

  ‘That’s Victoria Terrace—there’s a police station in there now. The authorities wanted to pull it down but the conservationists objected and won their case on architectural grounds.’

  ‘I don’t see the point.’

  ‘Well, you see, it was Gestapo Headquarters during the war and it still smells to a lot of Norwegians.’ He paused. ‘I had a session in there once, with a man called Dieter Brun. Not a nice chap. He was killed towards the end of the war. Someone ran him down with a car.’

  McCready was quiet because Carey rarely spoke of his past service. ‘I’ve been running around Scandinavia for nearly forty years—Spitzbergen to the Danish-German border, Bergen to the Russo-Finnish border. I’ll be sixty next month,’ said Carey. ‘And the bloody world hasn’t changed, after all.’ There was a note of quiet melancholy in his voice.

  Next morning they all flew to Finland.

  FOURTEEN

  Lyn Meyrick was worried about her father, which was a new and unwanted experience. Her previous worries in that direction had always been for herself in relation to her father. To worry for her father was something new which gave her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She had been delighted when he suggested that she accompany him to Finland; a delight compounded by the fact that for the first time he was treating her like a grown-up person. He now asked her opinion and deferred to her wishes in a way he had never done before. Diffidently she had fallen in with his wish that she call him by his given name and she was becoming accustomed to it.

  However, the delight had been qualified by the presence of Diana Hansen who somehow destroyed that adult feeling and made her feel young and gawky like a schoolgirl. The relationship between Diana and her father puzzled her. At first she had thought they were lovers and had been neither surprised nor shocked. Well, not too shocked. Her father was a man and not all that old, and her mother had not been reticent about the reasons for the divorce. And, yet, she had not thought that Diana Hansen would have been the type to appeal to her father and the relationship seemed oddly cold and almost businesslike.

  And there were other things about him that were strange. He would become abstract and remote. This was nothing new because he had always had that ability to switch off in the middle of a conversation which made her feel as though he had dropped a barrier to cut her off. What was new was that he would snap out of these abstracted moments and smile at her in a way he never had before, which made her heart turn over. And he seemed deliberately to put himself out to please her.

  And he was losing his memory, too. Not about anything big or important, but about minor things like…like Thread-Bear, for instance. How could a man forget a pun which had caused so much excitement in a little girl? If there was anything about her father that had annoyed her in the past it was his memory for detail—he usually remembered too much for her comfort. It was all very odd.

  Anyway, she was glad he had invited her to go to the University to meet the man with the unpronounceable name. He had been hesitant about it, and she said, ‘Why are you going?’

  ‘It’s just that I want to find out something about my father.’

  ‘But that’s my grandfather,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m coming.’

  It seemed strange to have a grandfather called Hannu Merikken. She sat before the mirror and contemplated herself, making sure that all was in order. I’m not bad-looking, she thought, as she regarded the straight black eyebrows and the grey eyes. Mouth too big, of course. I’m no raving beauty, but I’ll do.

  She snatched up her bag and went to the door on the way to meet her father. Then she stopped in mid-pace and thought, What am I thinking of? It’s my father…not… She shook the thought from her and opened the door.

  Professor Kääriänen was a jolly, chubby-faced man of about sixty, not at all the dry professorial stick Lyn had imagined. He rose from his desk to greet Denison, and shot out a spate of Finnish. Denison held up his hand in protest: ‘I’m sorry; I have no Finnish.’

  Kääriänen raised his eyebrows and said in English, ‘Remarkable!’

  Denison shrugged. ‘Is it? I left when I was seventeen. I suppose I spoke Finnish for fifteen years—and I haven’t spoken it for nearly thirty.’ He smiled. ‘You might say my Finnish language muscle has atrophied.’

  Kääriänen nodded understandably. ‘Yes, yes; my own German was once quite fluent—but now?’ He spread his hands. ‘So you are Hannu Merikken’s son.’

  ‘Allow me to introduce my daughter, Lyn.’

  Kääriänen came forward, his hands outstretched. ‘And his granddaughter—a great honour. But sit down, please. Would you like coffee?’

  ‘Thank you; that would be very nice.’

  Kääriänen went to the door, spoke to the girl in the other office, and then came back. ‘Your father was a great man, Dr…er…Meyrick.’

  Denison nodded. ‘That is my name now. I reverted to the old family name.’

  The professor laughed. ‘Ah, yes; I well remember Hannu telling me the story. He made it sound so romantic. And what are you doing here in Finland, Dr Meyrick?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Denison cautiously. ‘Perhaps it’s a need to get back to my origins. A delayed homesickness, if you like.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Kääriänen. ‘And you want to know something about your father—that’s why you’ve come to me?’

  ‘I understand you worked with him—before the war.’

  ‘I did, much to my own profit. Your father was not only a great research worker—he was also a great teacher. But I was not the only one. There were four of us, as I remember. You should remember that.’

  ‘I was very young before the war,’ said Denison defensively. ‘Not even into my teens.’

  ‘And you don’t remember me,’ said Kääriänen, his eyes twinkling. His hand patted his plump belly. ‘I’m not surprised; I’ve changed quite a lot. But I remember you. You were a young rascal—you upset one of my experiments.’

  Denison smiled. ‘If guilty I plead sorrow.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kääriänen reminiscently. ‘There were four of us with your father in those days. We made a good team.’ He frowned. ‘You know; I think I am the only one left.’ He ticked them off with his fingers. ‘Olavi Koivisto joined the army and was killed. Liisa Linnankivi—she was also killed in the bombing of Viipuri; that was just before your father died, of course. Kaj Salojärvi survived the war; he died three years ago—cancer, poor fellow. Yes, there is only me left of the old team.’

  ‘Did you all work together on the same projects?’

  ‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no.’ Kääriänen leaned forward. ‘Sometimes we worked on our own projects with Hannu giving advice. As a scientist yourself, Dr Meyrick, you will understand the work of the laboratory.’

  Denison nodded. ‘What was the main trend of my father’s thought in those days before the war?’

  Kääriänen spread his hands. ‘What else but the atom? We were all thinking about the atom. Those were the great pioneering days, you know; it was very exciting.’ He paused, and added drily, ‘Not long after that, of course, it became too exciting, but by that time no one in Finland had time to think about the atom.’

  He cl
asped his hands across his belly. ‘I well remember the time Hannu showed me a paper written by Meitner and Frisch interpreting Hahn’s experiments. The paper showed clearly that a chain reaction could take place and that the generation of atomic energy was clearly possible. We were all excited—you cannot imagine the excitement—and all our work was put aside to concentrate on this new thing.’ He shrugged heavily. ‘But that was 1939—the year of the Winter War. No time for frivolities like atoms.’ His tone was sardonic.

  ‘What was my father working on when this happened?’

  ‘Ah—here is the coffee,’ said Kääriänen. He fussed about with the coffee, and offered small cakes to Lyn. ‘And what do you do, young lady? Are you a scientist like your father and your grandfather?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Lyn politely. ‘I’m a teacher.’

  ‘We must have the teachers, too,’ said Kääriänen. ‘What was that you asked, Doctor?’

  ‘I was wondering what my father was working on at the time he read the paper on atomic fission.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the professor said vaguely, and waved his hand a little helplessly. ‘It was a long time ago, you know; so much has happened since—it is difficult to remember.’ He picked up a cake and was about to bite into it when he said, ‘I remember—it was something to do with some aspects of the properties of X-rays.’

  ‘Did you work on that project?’

  ‘No—that would be Liisa—or was it Olavi?’

  ‘So you don’t know the nature of the work he was doing?’

  ‘No.’ Kääriänen’s face broke into a smile, and he shook with laughter. ‘But, knowing your father, I can tell you it had no practical application. He was very proud of being a pure research physicist. We were all like that in those days—proud of being uncontaminated by the world.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘A pity we’re not like that now.’

  The next hour and a half was spent in reminiscences from Kääriänen interspersed with Denison’s desperate ploys to fend off his inquiries into Meyrick’s work. After allowing what he thought was a decent time he excused himself and he and Lyn took their leave of the professor with assurances that they would keep in professional contact.