The P.M. turned towards Edinburgh’s Chief Constable. ‘Sorry to have been forced to use exceptional methods in handling matters last night. But what happened? Any clues?’
The Chief Constable shook his head. He hadn’t been much in bed and was beginning to get angry. The whole thing seemed pointless. And he could swear that Deirdre Carpenter was lying about something or other. She knew more than she was prepared to say.
‘What makes you think so?’ The Secretary of State was also tired, but at least the thing was now out of his hands and on balance he failed to see anything wrong in Deirdre’s story.
‘I think she knows more about her old man than she’s willing to admit. She’s covering up to try and avoid an even bigger scandal. Wants to keep his memory pure or something.’
A few angles had been milling around in Grant’s mind. They seemed outrageous, but circumstantial evidence was strong and he decided to drop his bomb. The worst that could happen would be to look silly. But he had a strong hunch that he was right and that Zero had played things exactly as he was going to suggest. Who was this man Hunter who had blown in with the top brass last night and quietly taken over? Carpenter’s records were in the room next door and the girl was with his wife. What assurance had the company that the man was what the Prime Minister thought him to be?
The Colonel listened coldly. But Grant saw his jaw set and his eyes glint with fire. Short-tempered devil, he thought, but tried again. One of ADSAD’s men had been exposed as a double agent only yesterday morning and in the Prime Minister’s presence. Was it so very far-fetched to suggest that everyone in the room was a suspect, in theory at least? And his question remained. Who was Hunter? What was his background?
The Chief Constable looked up curiously.
‘“Everyone in the room” includes me?’
‘Exactly,’ said Grant. ‘Though I said “in theory” and we all know your record. But my point is that some of us don’t know much about Colonel Hunter.’
The Prime Minister lit his favourite cigar. ‘Colonel Hunter,’ he said icily, ‘has my own complete confidence and more than that I am not prepared to say.’
‘And you, Mike?’ Grant turned towards the Secretary of State. ‘Why didn’t you follow up that news flash and get one of your people to see if there was any truth in it?’
The Secretary of State shrugged his shoulders. His office got scores of queries every month about everything from the new Tay Bridge down to Polaris Missile sites. And he wasn’t a public-relations officer. They couldn’t all be followed up.
‘In any case,’ interrupted the Premier, ‘it was not within your terms of reference to bother about it. Certainly not at that stage, anyhow, when we had no other facts to go on and no evidence of anything being wrong.’ He drew cautiously at his Petit Corona. ‘I take it that I am included among your suspects.’ It was said as a statement of fact, and Grant decided it was policy to rise to it.
‘Why not? You weren’t keen to admit that Zero or SATAN could exist even when we had proof. You didn’t think much of the Admiral’s story about our own knowledge of SATAN when we called it Force X. You infiltrated a double agent into ADSAD branch H.Q. and used him to extract information about an ally. You are head of British Intelligence and yet you denied all knowledge about Carpenter’s work. Could that be a blanket to hide some private intention to sell Britain down the river by breaking the North Atlantic Alliance and giving Zero a clear hand?’
‘O.K., David,’ said the Secretary of State for Scotland slowly. ‘You’ve made your point. This unknown opposition works close to the inner circles of government. We can trust very few people and even then we do so with our tongue in our cheeks. But where does that take us? Surely you’re not seriously suggesting that any of us are black sheep?’
The four men were staring at Grant with a penetrating intensity which made him hesitate. But somewhere along the line he knew he was near the bull.
‘Say something, man,’ snapped the Premier. ‘You’re not always so tongue-tied.’
‘Then in my view one person in this room is Zero’s man.’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’ The words probably came from the Chief Constable, but Grant was listening to his hunch and playing it straight from the shoulder. He had bluffed successfully more times than he dared to think.
‘Let me prove it?’ He spoke softly, but with complete confidence, though still bluffing to the limit. ‘NATO’s Administrative Department relating to Security against Attack and Defence have monitored the voices of over two hundred men and women suspected of being connected with SATAN or other subversive organisations. These tapes are in ADSAD files and they were taken by tapping wires when suspects were using them for perfectly innocent reasons. Many were recorded in Britain, others in America and the rest on Continental Europe.’
The Prime Minister fidgeted restlessly. ‘Get on with it, man. How can tape-recordings help us?’
‘By using the latest sound spectrograph developed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories. This extremely clever gadget converts the sounds of the human voice into pictures and gives what the Americans call “voice prints”. But tests have shown that no two voices give the same picture. In fact it is the greatest development in detection of special types of crime since fingerprint classification eighty-odd years ago. And in our collection,’ he said softly, ‘is the voice of the man who reported on the first Wednesday of every month to the Salutation Hotel at Perth and used the query about Clanrana as a code word.
‘Now I can have these spectrographs up here before teatime today and if we all submit to a taping the technician who comes with them will convert them into “voice prints” which can be compared with those from the collection of SATAN suspects in our library. And it is my belief that one of our voices will tally. Though it took me a few hours to tumble to what is happening. It seemed so far-fetched that I just couldn’t believe it. But now,’ he added grimly, ‘I know.’
Grant lifted out a box of thick-headed matches and made as though to light his pipe. But the matches were one of his own most powerful and private secret weapons. Their heads were hollow capsules loaded with a paralysing nerve gas in such super-concentration that a sniff at close quarters meant virtually instantaneous paralysis unless immunity had been built up against it by repeated exposures under controlled circumstances. And so far as he knew he was the only man alive ever to have done this. The idea had been his own, and it had taken three months dangerous work with Professor Juin to manage it. But now he took his matches everywhere, and for this mission he had returned also to carrying a heavier dose in the heel of his shoes, built into a secret cavity and with enough gas in liquid form to immobilise a roomful of people.
He poised a match over the box and smiled. ‘Any of you feel like taking a chance?’
The Chief Constable was the first to break the dead silence. He had heard of ‘voice prints’ and had a local man who knew how to use them. Grant seemed poised for action and his eyes were like flint. The man looked set to kill and for a second even the policeman was half afraid. ‘I’ll take a chance,’ he said thickly. ‘Innocence is a good defence against any monkey business.’
‘And we’ll exempt the Prime Minister,’ said Grant smoothly, ‘but how about you, Colonel? Will you play?’
‘Colonel Hunter,’ said the Secretary of State shortly, ‘Dr. Grant has asked a question.’
But Hunter was sitting as though he had seen a ghost. His face was pale and his hands frozen round the stem of his pipe.
‘How did you find out?’ he asked, and in the same second began to fumble with the curving bowl of his briar.
‘Can I help you?’ said Grant swiftly, and flashed his match under Hunter’s nose. The man stared blankly and suddenly flopped forwards over the table while Grant grabbed the pipe and carefully laid it down on the floor. The Prime Minister was wiping his forehead and the other two men seemed dazed. The room was small and the window shut. The concentration of the gas was low, but enough to have gi
ven them all a minute backlash which had knocked them off balance. They would recover in minutes, but for Hunter it was the final curtain. Grant pulled the man towards a far corner of the room and lighted two more matches near his face. They would be enough to knock him out for the rest of the day.
‘So now more coffee,’ he muttered. Coffee for the rest of the victims. And it was another sharp lesson learned about how effective this gas stuff could be. He had almost used them in Deirdre Carpenter’s house, but Zero had beaten him to it and offered a light first. It would have been suicide to have insisted on using his own.
But did Mrs. Hunter know anything about her husband’s double life? The girl was in her hands. He left the study, sweating slightly, and ran up to her room.
Mrs. Hunter had joined her for breakfast and Deirdre looked a picture as her gleaming white hair tumbled loosely over the pillow. ‘Hiya,’ he smiled.
She lifted a hand. ‘Hiya! I feel much better.’
Mrs. Hunter was an insipid-looking woman of about forty with a sad face and prematurely grey hair. ‘Just to let you know, ma’am, that the meeting looks like going on for another few hours. Your husband asked me to tell you that we won’t need anything till luncheon.’
She nodded affably. ‘I’ll fix it for one o’clock and that’ll give you time for a drink beforehand.’
Grant smiled again towards Deirdre. ‘Bed till tomorrow and don’t worry. Everything looks like turning out just fine.’
Downstairs in Hunter’s study he found the P.M. still mopping his brow and looking dazed. The other two men were standing by an open window, their collars open and faces still pale. ‘Sorry about that lot, gentlemen. But I know what you suffered even with just a whiff.’
The Secretary for Scotland stared at him coldly. ‘So help me God, David, if you ever do that again I’ll have you in jail. And how come whatever it was didn’t affect you?’
Speaking rapidly Grant explained how he had built up his own immunity by repeated exposures to one of the most deadly paralysing gases known to man and how he had used it more than once to escape from catastrophe. That it was almost the ultimate weapon. And as matters had shaped he had had no alternative but to use the tiny loaded gas bombs which were his matches. Coated with phosphorus, flame vaporised the fluid instantaneously and there was enough in each one to knock a man out for minutes.
‘And why the need for haste?’ asked the Premier unsteadily. ‘Hunter could do nothing?’
Grant pointed to the pipe on the floor. ‘No?’ He paused. ‘Didn’t you see how he put his other pipe in his pocket when I began to talk about “voice prints” and how he pulled out this other one. He held it in his hand all the time and began to try twist the curve of the stem at the same time that he said “How did you find out?” Too heavy by far. My bet is that it’s a bomb and that he decided to take us all with him when he found that the game was up.’
The Chief Constable stared at the thing curiously. ‘David Grant,’ he said at last, ‘you’ve a mind like an accursed gypsy. Was it seventh sense or something? How in the name of reasonable sanity did you get on to Hunter? The man’s alibi was foolproof.’
Grant turned to the Premier. ‘You remember that character who was shot in the Big House yesterday? The caretaker. And how he said that a contact man went to a pub in Perth on the first Wednesday of every month? Well, I went there myself after that operation on the leg of Zero’s agent. The one who was later killed. And I asked the barmen if they remembered anyone calling regularly to ask for a Clanrana. You know that it’s a very rare liqueur. So they would remember. But it was sticking my neck out a bit because clearly one of the barmen must have been a stringer for SATAN. However, I took a chance. One of them got flustered plus plus and after that it was easy. I pinched him, took him to the local nick and worked on him for an hour. He gave an accurate description which I later saw could apply to Colonel Hunter and that was that. Though it took a while to “click”.
‘But when Hunter manœuvred things so that we all ended up in his own house, girl, papers, records and all, I decided that it was worth looking into. Now he told us last night that you had ordered this yourself. But you looked surprised to find us all here when you arrived. In fact your first words this morning were “I see you’ve beaten me to it”. Which proved you hadn’t expected to find us at all. Which made Hunter a liar. After that it was simply a matter of time until the barman’s description came back to mind and I spotted that it applied as well to Hunter as to any other man. So I ran my bluff and started by accusing you three. But it was bad for his blood pressure and he gave himself away several times. Though when he changed pipes I knew that I was on to something. And,’ he added quietly, ‘I’ll take another bet, that our conversation was again monitored. This electronic age makes it nearly impossible for honest men to do anything without being overheard!’
He was systematically emptying Hunter’s pockets and examining every item. The man wore a fob watch with a seal. It was both out of fashion and out of character with the rest of his clothes. ‘There,’ he said grimly. ‘Still one more microphone which can probably send upwards of a hundred yards. Some car or other will have been parked outside taping whatever came through and when Hunter virtually admitted that he had been caught the car would fade. But fast. So we’re back where we started.’ He straightened himself and almost laughed. ‘Who said that it was a bad rule in Security to repeat the same tactics! Zero did it several times and I’ve done it more than once myself. If you’ve got a good thing it pays every time to use it. But since we don’t know what other more powerful kind of transmitter your colonel may have had built into his blasted study we’d better push off elsewhere, taking the girl with us and carting Mrs. Hunter off for a nice quiet grilling by some of your own people.’ He looked at the Chief Constable. ‘Agreed?’
The older man wiped his forehead and drew a deep breath. ‘Agreed!’
That afternoon Grant edged his car through the crowded West End and pointed for Prestwick. Deirdre Carpenter was beside him. She had refused to be left out of it and Grant had a hunch that she might be useful. Mrs. Carpenter had been rated innocent of any knowledge of her husband’s double life. But it had been proven that the man was in debt to his eyebrows and that he had been running two bank accounts, one of which was in a false name and loaded with pay-in chits which came from unknown sources.
The Premier was now scheduled to do a broadcast that night, but already Edinburgh’s streets were filled with milling people who knew only a fantastic basic story flashed in the one o’clock news.
Teenage hooligans had been arrested for starting a riot near the Scott Monument and the few cafés which were open had run out of soft drinks. Every hotel was full and there had been a big run on the bars after the news bulletin. A switch of programmes had been arranged for later in the evening and two doctors with a scientist and a member from the Nature Conservancy would discuss Edinburgh’s sterility immediately after the Premier’s speech.
‘A good place to get out of!’ said Grant steadily, as the crowd grew thicker near Binn’s. Extra police had been drafted but some of the younger people were in a dangerous mood and he guessed that there would be trouble before night.
The girl eased her leg stiffly. ‘And all because of Dad!’ She forced a smile. ‘It seems impossible to believe.’
They were stopped at the traffic signals when her door was suddenly pulled open. A drunken youth swayed uncertainly and then leaned over to touch her. ‘What a babe!’ He grinned. ‘An’ she won’t need to worry about nothin’, will she? Bloody sterile like all the rest of the birds.’
Grant drew a police truncheon from the door pocket and smacked him across the knuckles as the lights changed to amber, Deirdre slammed the door and the car leapt forwards up Lothian Road. ‘See what I mean?’ he said tautly. ‘This place is going to see murder done when it gets dark. Or unless the P.M. can steady their nerves.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s taken an hour or two to penetrate their skulls. But once the full
shock of it all sinks in, the Edinburgh police’ll have to be on their toes to control the place.’
‘But why?’ asked Deirdre desperately. ‘Why are some people so crude?’
‘It’s only law and the discipline of public opinion that keeps society under control at any time. But now that something has happened which cuts to the very roots of everything we take for granted there’ll be some sort of hysteria. And that’s where the wide boys and hooligans will step in. Because when honest men get knocked off balance you can bet your bottom dollar that the others won’t miss a trick.’
‘But the Festival?’ said Deirdre. ‘It’s got another week to go.’
Grant pointed to a placard.
will new drug
stop festival?
Two hundred yards along the road towards Toll Cross another poster was being pasted up by a down-at-heel corner boy.
director says
festival
goes on
‘There’s your answer,’ said Grant grimly. ‘The good old British technique. Start a rumour. And then get it denied. The Director won’t stop the Festival. Though the Secretary of State might: or the governments of the countries abroad which sent so many artistes. But anyhow,’ he muttered, ‘there’s nothing we can do about that. Or, at least,’ he corrected, ‘not until we’ve found your old man.’
Live, Love, and Cry Page 10
