The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

by Desmond Bagley

  They came out into Senate Square and made their way back to the hotel along Aleksanterinkatu, Helsinki’s equivalent of Bond Street. Lyn was thoughtful and quiet, and Denison said, ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said. ‘It seemed at one time as though you were pumping Professor Kääriänen.’

  Did it, by God! thought Denison. You’re too bloody smart by half. Aloud he said, ‘I just wanted to know about my father, the work he did and so on.’

  ‘You didn’t give much back,’ said Lyn tartly. ‘Every time he asked a question you evaded it.’

  ‘I had to,’ said Denison. ‘Most of my work is in defence. I can’t babble about that in a foreign country.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lyn colourlessly.

  They were outside a jeweller’s shop and Denison pointed. ‘What do you think of that?’

  She caught her breath. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’

  It was a necklace—chunky, rough-hewn gold of an intricate and yet natural shape. He felt reckless and took her arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Inside.’

  The necklace cost him £215 of Meyrick’s money which he paid by credit card. Apart from the fact that he thought that Meyrick ought to pay more attention to his daughter he thought it would take her mind off other things.

  ‘Your birthday present,’ he said.

  Lyn was breathless with excitement. ‘Oh, thank you, Da…Harry.’ Impulsively she kissed him. ‘But I have nothing to wear with it.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to buy something, won’t you? Let’s go back to the hotel.’

  ‘Yes, let’s.’ She slipped her fingers into his. ‘I have a surprise for you, too—at the hotel.’

  ‘Oh? What is it?’

  ‘Well, I thought that now you’re back in Finland you ought to become reacquainted with the sauna.’

  He laughed, and said cheerfully, ‘I’ve never been to a sauna in my life.’

  She stopped dead on the pavement and stared at him. ‘But you must have. When you were a boy.’

  ‘Oh, yes; I went then.’ He cursed himself for the slip. Carey had given him books to read about Finland; language was one thing but there was a minimum any Finn would know, expatriate or not. The sauna definitely fitted into that category. ‘I tend to regard my years in Finland as another life.’ It was lame but it would have to do.

  ‘It’s about time you were reintroduced to the sauna,’ she said firmly. ‘I go often in London—it’s great fun. I’ve booked for us both in the hotel sauna for six o’clock.’

  ‘Great!’ he said hollowly.

  FIFTEEN

  In the hotel he escaped to his room and rang the number he had been given. When Carey answered he gave a report on his interview with Kääriänen, and Carey said, ‘So it all comes to this: Merikken was working on X-rays at the time but no one can remember exactly what he was doing. Those who would know are dead. That’s encouraging.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denison.

  ‘You don’t sound pleased,’ said Carey.

  ‘It’s not that. I have something else on my mind.’

  ‘Out with it.’

  ‘Lyn has booked me in for the sauna this evening.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She’s booked us both in.’

  ‘So?’ There was a pause before Carey chuckled. ‘My boy; I can see you have a wrong impression or an evil mind. This is not Hamburg nor is it the lower reaches of Soho; you’re in Helsinki and the Finns are a decent people. I think you’ll find there is one sauna for gentlemen and another for ladies.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Denison weakly. ‘It’s just that I don’t know much about it. One gets the wrong impression.’

  ‘Didn’t you read the books I gave you?’

  ‘I must have missed that one.’

  ‘In any case, there’s nothing wrong with a father joining his daughter in the sauna,’ said Carey judicially. ‘It may be done in your own home but not, I think, in an international hotel.’ He paused. ‘You’d better read up on it. Meyrick wouldn’t have forgotten the sauna—no Finn would.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Have fun,’ said Carey, and rang off.

  Denison put down the telephone and rummaged in his suitcase where he found a slim book on the sauna written for the benefit of English-speaking visitors to Finland. On studying it he was relieved to find that the sauna appeared to be little more than a Turkish bath in essence—with differences.

  He turned back the pages and read the introduction. There was, apparently, one sauna for every six Finns which, he reflected, was probably a greater incidence than bathrooms in Britain. A clean people, the Finns—mens sana in corpore sauna. Stones were heated by birch logs or, in modern times, by electric elements. Humidity was introduced by löyly—tossing water on the stones. The booklet managed to convey an air of mystic ritual about what was essentially a prosaic activity, and Denison came to the conclusion that the sauna was the Finnish equivalent of the Japanese tea ceremony.

  At quarter to six Lyn rang him. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I’ll meet you afterwards in the swimming pool. Have you got your trunks?’

  Denison mentally ran down a checklist of Meyrick’s clothing. ‘Yes.’

  ‘At half past six, then.’ She rang off.

  He went up to the top floor of the hotel, found the sauna for men, and went into the change room where he took his time, taking his cue from the others who were there. He stripped and went into the ante-chamber to the sauna where he showered and then took a square of towelling from a pile and went into the sauna itself.

  It was hot.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man lay his towel on a slatted, wooden bench and sit on it, so he followed suit. The wood beneath his feet was almost unbearably hot and sweat was already beginning to start from his skin. A man left the sauna and another took a bucket of water and sluiced it along the wood on which his feet were resting. Tendrils of steam arose but his feet were cooler.

  Another man left the sauna and Denison turned and found a thermometer on the wall by his head. It registered 115 degrees. Not too bad, he thought; I can stand that. Then he looked again and saw that the thermometer was calibrated in degrees Celsius. Christ Almighty! Water boils at 100°C.

  He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and turned his head to find that there was just himself and another man left—a broad-shouldered, deep-chested man, shaggy with hair. The man picked up a wooden dipper and filled it with water from a bucket. He paused with it in his hand, and said interrogatively, ‘Löylyä?’

  Denison answered with one of the few Finnish words he had picked up. ‘Kiitos.’

  The man tossed the dipperful of water on to the square tub of hot stones in the corner. A blast of heat hit Denison like a physical blow and he gasped involuntarily. The man shot a sudden spate of Finnish at him, and Denison shook his head. ‘I’m sorry; I have no Finnish.’

  ‘Ah; first time in Finland?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Denison, and added, ‘since I was a boy.’

  The man nodded. A sheen of sweat covered his hairy torso. He grinned. ‘First time in sauna?’

  Sweat dripped from Denison’s nose. ‘For a long time—many years.’

  The man nodded and rose. He picked up the dipper again and, turning away from Denison, he filled it from the bucket, Denison gritted his teeth. Anything a bloody Finn can stand, I can; he thought.

  With a casual flick of the wrist the man tossed the water on to the hot stones, then quickly went out of the sauna, slamming the door behind him. Again the wave of heat hit Denison, rising to an almost intolerable level so that he gasped and spluttered. A bloody practical joker—baiting a beginner!

  He felt his head swim and tried to stand up but found that his legs had gone rubbery beneath him. He rolled off the top bench and tried to crawl to the door and felt the hot wood burning his hands. Darkness closed in on him and the last thing he saw was his own hand groping for the door handle b
efore he collapsed and passed out.

  He did not see the door open, nor did he feel himself being lifted up and carried out.

  SIXTEEN

  He awoke to darkness.

  For a long time he just lay there, unable to think because of the throbbing pain in his head. Then his head cleared a little and he stirred and knew he was lying on a bed. When he moved he heard a metallic clinking noise. He moved again and became aware that he was naked, and a recollection of the sauna came back.

  His first thought was that he had collapsed of heat prostration and had been taken to his own room, but when he lifted his hand that theory disintegrated quickly. There was a tug on both wrists and he felt cold metal, and when he twisted his hands around he heard that clinking sound again and felt the handcuffs.

  He lay quiet for a while before he levered himself up on one elbow to stare into the blackness, then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Tentatively he moved his feet apart; at least they were not manacled and he could walk. But walk where? He held his arms out before him and moved them sideways, first to the left and then to the right, until he encountered an object. It was flat with square edges and he concluded it was a bedside table. Exploring the top brought no joy; there was nothing on it.

  Although his headache had eased he felt as weak as a kitten and he sat for a few moments to conserve his strength. Whether his weakness was a natural result of the heat of the sauna was debatable. He reasoned that if the sauna did that to everyone then it would not be so popular in Finland. Apart from that, he had no idea of how long he had been unconscious. He felt his skin and found it cool and with no moisture.

  After a while he stood up with his arms out in front of him and began to shuffle forward. He had gone only a few feet when he stubbed his toe on something and the pain was agonizing. ‘Damn!’ he said viciously, and stepped back until he felt the bed behind his legs. He sat down and nursed his foot.

  A sound came from the other side of the room and he saw a patch of greyness, quickly obscured and vanishing. A light suddenly stabbed at him and he blinked and screwed up his eyes against the sudden glare. A voice said in accented English, ‘So Dr Meyrick is awake—and up, too.’

  Denison brought up his hands before his eyes. The voice said sharply, ‘Don’t move, Meyrick. Stay on the bed.’ Then, more coolly, ‘Do you know what this is?’

  The lamp dipped a little so that he could see the vague outline of a man in back-reflected light. He saw the glint of metal in an out-thrust hand. ‘Well?’ said the voice impatiently. ‘What is it, Meyrick?’

  Denison’s voice was hoarse. ‘A pistol.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to know what the hell this is all about.’

  The voice was amused. ‘No doubt you would.’ As Denison tried to sort out the accent the light played over him. ‘I see you’ve hurt your side, Dr Meyrick. How did that happen?’

  ‘A pack of maniacs attacked me in Norway. They seem to have the same breed in Finland, too.’

  ‘Poor Dr Meyrick,’ mocked the voice. ‘You seem to be continually in trouble. Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘Of course I did. What else would you expect me to do? And to the British Embassy in Oslo.’ He remembered what Carey had said about Meyrick’s bloody-mindedness, and added irascibly, ‘Bloody incompetents—the lot of them.’

  ‘Who did you see at the Embassy?’

  ‘A man called McCready picked me up at the police station and took me to the Embassy. Look, I’ve had enough of this. I’m answering no more questions. None at all.’

  The pistol moved languidly. ‘Yes, you will. Did you meet Carey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  ‘If you think you know the answers, why ask me the questions? I don’t know anyone called Carey.’

  A sigh came out of the darkness. ‘Meyrick, I think you ought to know that we have your daughter.’

  Denison tensed, but sat quietly. After a moment he said, ‘Prove it.’

  ‘Nothing easier.’ The pistol withdrew slowly. ‘Tape recorders are made conveniently small these days, are they not?’ There was a click and a slight hissing noise in the darkness beyond the flashlight, then a man spoke:

  ‘Now tell me; what’s your father doing here in Finland?’

  ‘He’s on holiday.’

  That was Lyn’s clear voice. Denison recognized it in spite of the slight distortion which was far less than that of a telephone.

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Who else would tell me?’ She sounded amused.

  ‘But he went to see Professor Kääriänen this afternoon. That sounds more like business than pleasure.’

  ‘He wanted to find out something about his father—my grandfather.’

  ‘What did he want to find out?’

  There was a raw silence, then the man said, ‘Come now, Miss Meyrick; nothing will happen, either to you or to your father, if you answer my questions. I assure you that you will be released unharmed.’

  A switch snapped and the voices stopped. From the darkness: ‘You see, Dr Meyrick! Of course, I cannot guarantee the truthfulness of my friend regarding his last statement.’ The pistol reappeared, glinting in the light. ‘Now, to return to Mr Carey—what did he have to say?’

  ‘He hauled me over the coals for being in a road accident,’ said Denison.

  The voice sharpened. ‘You can do better than that. Now, having put you and Carey together, I want to know just what you’re doing here in Finland. I want it truthfully, and I want it quickly. And you’d better start thinking seriously of your daughter’s health.’ The gun jerked. ‘Talk!’

  Denison was never more conscious of the disadvantages of being naked; it took the pith out of a man. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re here to see the Finnish government.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘A defence project.’

  ‘Who in the government?’

  ‘Not really the government,’ said Denison inventively. ‘Someone in the army—in military intelligence.’

  ‘The name?’ When Denison was silent the gun jerked impatiently. ‘The name, Meyrick.’

  Denison was hastily trying to slap together a name that sounded even remotely Finnish. ‘Saarinen.’

  ‘He’s an architect.’

  ‘Not this one—this one’s a colonel,’ said Denison, hoping it was a rank in the Finnish army. He was listening intently but heard no sound other than an occasional rustle of clothing from the other side of the bright light.

  ‘What’s the project?’

  ‘Electronic espionage—equipment for monitoring Russian broadcasts, especially on military wavelengths.’

  There was a long silence. ‘I suppose you know that this is already done.’

  ‘Not the way I do it,’ said Denison.

  ‘All right; how do you do it? And let’s not have me extract answers like pulling teeth or that girl of yours might have some of her teeth pulled.’

  ‘I invented an automatic decoder,’ said Denison. A barrier broke in his mind and a wave of panic and terror swept over him. He felt sweat trickle down his chest and then deliberately pushed the panic back where it had come from—but he retained the words that had come with it.

  ‘It’s a stochastic process,’ he said, not even knowing what the word meant. ‘A development of the Monte Carlo method. The Russian output is repeatedly sampled and put through a series of transformations at random. Each transformation is compared with a store held in a computer memory—if a match is made a tree branching takes place leading to a further set of transformations. There are a lot of dead ends and it needs a big, fast computer—very powerful.’

  The sweat poured off him. He had not understood a word of what he had said.

  ‘I got most of that,’ said the voice, and Denison thought he detected a touch of awe. ‘You invented this thing?’

  ‘I developed the circuits and helped with the programming,’ said Denison sullenly.

  ‘The
re’s one thing I don’t understand—and this I really have to know. Why give it to the Finns?’

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Denison. ‘They gave it to us. They developed the basics. They didn’t have the resources to follow up, so they gave it to us.’

  ‘Professor Kääriänen?’

  ‘Look,’ said Denison. ‘Let me hear that tape again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not saying another bloody word until I hear it,’ said Denison stubbornly.

  A pause. ‘All right; here’s a re-run.’

  The gun vanished and there was a click.

  ‘Now tell me; what’s your father doing here in Finland?’

  ‘He’s on holiday.’

  Denison strained his ears as he listened to the conversation and evaluated the voices. He raised his hands and slowly parted them so that the link of the handcuffs tightened.

  ‘He wanted to find out something about his father—my grandfather.’

  ‘What did he want to find out?’ A pause. ‘Come now, Miss Meyrick; nothing will happen, either to you or to your father, if you ans…’

  Denison lunged, moving fast. He had moved his legs under the bed, so that when he moved he was on the balls of his feet and utilizing the maximum thrust of his thighs. His hands were as wide apart as he could spread them and he rammed them forward as though to grab the man by the ears. The link between the handcuffs caught the man right across the larynx.

  Both tape recorder and flashlight dropped to the floor; the flashlight rolled, sending grotesque shadows about the room, and the recorder babbled. Denison kept up his pressure on the man’s throat and was aware of cloth as he pressed his hands to his opponent’s face. In the shifting light he saw the glint of metal as the man raised the pistol from his pocket and he twisted his hand frantically and managed to grab the wrist as it came up.

  With his left hand holding firmly on to his opponent’s right wrist he thrust firmly so that the steel link cut into the man’s throat. The gun was thus held close to the man’s right ear, and when it went off with a blinding flare and a deafening explosion the man reeled away and dropped it.