“So you’re suggesting there’s been a leak and we’re facing a kidnap job, organized by the Communists. But I don’t see how anybody can possibly be kidnapped in space.”
Latymer gave a hard, mirthless smile. “Frankly, nor do I. There just isn’t the machinery for it! The Russian manned orbital space stations can’t help—they can’t interfere one way or the other. Nor can the American stations combat any funny business. . . .” He had closed his eyes now, leaning back once more and thinking aloud. “They can’t put vehicles into orbit—they’re equipped for direct rocket flight only. No . . . they’re out. As to a vehicle from earth, something to dock on . . . that’s out, too. I can’t see anyone risking a fight in space, nor can I see them managing to dock on without co-operation from inside Skyprobe. . . .”
“Nor me.” Shaw ran a hand through his hair. “It all sounds like a hell of a lot of quite unnecessary trouble. Wouldn’t Danvers-Marshall be easier to deal with on the ground? A straightforward kidnap job in the States?” Latymer opened his eyes. “On the face of it, yes,” he answered smoothly, “but it doesn’t necessarily follow, does it?”
Shaw shrugged. “Well, there’s no FBI or CIA up there in orbit, certainly—”
“Quite. It’s not so easy to smuggle a high-powered scientist out of the States. Any hostile Power, mentioning no names, could have other methods up its sleeve anyway—for instance, I’ve no doubt Danvers-Marshall could be nabbed on splashdown, before the recovery fleet reaches him. The same applies if in fact it’s the capsule and not any of the crew they’re after. These people could have submarines on station in the Caribbean easily enough. Even the US Navy can’t be one hundred percent certain of being able to keep tabs on all the submarines our hypothetical Power could send into the area—not even by using Aga Thermovision mounted in aircraft. It’s dicey, Shaw—very dicey.” Latymer drummed his fingers heavily on the desk. “We’ll have to act fast now. Since this thing has arisen here in London, it’s up to us at this stage. The Americans will expect a full report in double-quick time,
including a complete breakdown on this Pole. I want you to drop everything and find out precisely what the threat is. I suggest you’re most likely to do that if you first find Rudolf Rencke. I’ll see the ports and airfields are watched for a start, but Rencke’s slippery—he’s been sliding through check-points for years. In the meantime, get cracking and dig up all you can on the dead man—that could lead to Rencke. Of course,” he added, “all our theorizing could be wildly off the beam. All the same, there’s something else . . . something that could link up. Don’t ask me how or where.” Latymer reached into a drawer and brought out a thin folder which he pushed across to Shaw. “This came in late yesterday from the FO for my personal attention.”
Shaw took the folder, saw that on Page One it carried the Top Secret stamp followed by the somewhat rare instruction, FOR UK EYES ONLY. He recognized the various ‘twiddles’, as the cross-references to other relevant classified documents were known within the department. The information itself was brief and to the point: British agents working inside the Communist borders had reported greatly increased activity in the Russian space research establishments, and had reported also that certain new developments appeared to follow closely those recently evolved by the United States; the clear inference being that space-programme data could have been finding its way into Communist countries from the West. No details were given and there were no indications as to likely sources. But, as Latymer had suggested, there was at least some possible if tenuous affinity between these agents’ reports and the message, whatever it might have been, that the murdered Pole had intended to pass on. If the intelligence reports were accurate, and there was no prima facie reason why they should be doubted, then the East was already on the ball spywise. And there was a note in the Prime Minister’s own hand to the effect that, notwithstanding the FO instruction about the limited circulation of the document, the information was to be passed at once to Washington.
Shaw closed the folder. “Has Washington been told yet?” he asked.
“Yes. I don’t know the reaction yet, but I’ve no doubt they always expect a certain leakage and won’t be too worried.” This was true; no-one could ever be certain all staff had been one hundred percent investigated, however tough the screening procedure. “But this threat, vague as it all is, could be the crystalization of any previous leaks, if you follow.”
Shaw nodded. “What’s your guess as to America’s likely action now—once they’ve heard about the threat, that is?”
Latymer lifted his shoulders. “I’ve no idea. Ultimately they may order the spacecraft to ditch ahead of schedule, but I should think they’ll want something very much firmer to go on before they do that. This flight, I repeat, means a hell of a lot to the West, Shaw—us as well as America— not least prestigewise. Nevertheless, there’s one overriding consideration I trust they’re going to have well in the front of their minds, and it’s this: if the Communists are allowed to carry out successfully any kind of threat to an American spacecraft in flight, then public opinion in the States isn’t going to settle for anything less than a full-scale war.”
THREE
In Scotland Yard’s mortuary Shaw took a closer look at the Pole. There was nothing remarkable about the body except for one thing: the fifth toe on the left foot was missing. There was also an old appendix scar; but there was nothing whatever in the way of moles, war wounds or other distinguishing marks.
But that missing toe could be a big help. . . .
Shaw asked, “Have you any idea when it was amputated, Doctor?”
The police surgeon shook his head. “That’s quite impossible to say.” He rubbed his chin musingly, then added, “All I can tell you is that it doesn’t really strike me as having been done particularly recently.”
“Could it have happened in the war, say?”
“I don’t know . . . it could have, yes. Even before that— I’m afraid I really can’t possibly be precise.”
“I see.” Shaw looked down thoughtfully at the thin body on the slab. In life the man had looked anxious—a man whose worries had shown in his face; in death that face was still hauntingly anxious, perhaps because of the unaccomplished mission . . . Shaw had a strange feeling that he owed it to this dead man, in a personal sense, to see to it that he hadn’t been pierced by that needle-sharp length of steel entirely in vain. The brown eyes—sad eyes in life—stared blankly at nothing. Shaw turned away; there was nothing more to ask here, in this clean, bleak, melancholy room. Already he had taken the body’s measurements and a detailed description, plus a cast, of the teeth, and he had a posthumous photograph of the dead man. He had gone through the corpse’s possessions as found by the police in the pockets; here again there was nothing of interest. There had been the usual clutter from a man’s pockets—tobacco, cigarette-papers, the miniature do-it-yourself outfit, and also a packet of Benson & Hedges, which confirmed Shaw’s original theory that the man’s roll-your-own act was no more than background colour for a new identity. It had been clumsy, to carry around those ready-mades. . . . There was a Ronson lighter, an expensive one; a handkerchief as innocent of identifying marks as the rest of the clothing—the shirt and underwear, right down to the socks, were all new and were all drip-dries, so wouldn’t have been near a laundry. The pathetic collection was completed by a ball-point pen and a pocket-book containing money but again no identification, no addresses, no letters, the only revelation being the gilt imprint: REAL CALF MADE IN ENGLAND.
Shaw gestured to the attendant, who pulled the sheet over the body; then, as anonymously as he had arrived, he left the Yard.
* * *
An Army Records Office somewhere in North London yielded up the medical histories of Poles who had come to Britain to continue the war of liberation after Hitler and then Stalin had overrun their own country back in 1939.
The files were many and dusty and yellowed, and seemed not to have been disturbed for the last two decades
or so. Shaw took the officers first. Aware that, despite the dead man’s instant reaction to his question, he could have been quite wrong in his assumptions as to nationality and calling, he searched carefully, minutely, painstakingly for hour after hour.
A taciturn, middle-aged woman, wearing rimless spectacles and the uniform of a staff-sergeant in the WRAC, brought him seemingly endless cups of lukewarm Ministry tea.
* * *
With its three occupants Skyprobe IV continued on its interminable orbits, still travelling at 27,000 m.p.h. and now at a height of something over 970 miles. The electrical connections that had fed power from the Titan 6C launching rocket still trailed from its plastics-covered rear. The two Air Force majors sat side by side in their contour seats, making the routine checks and keeping in periodic contact with the earth. Early on there had been a little trouble with the fuel cell, but they had got it operating again quite quickly by means of a cross-feed valve, and now all they needed to do was occasionally to check the fuel cell pressure. Danvers-Marshall sat behind them with little to do at this almost two-thirds-through stage but watch out of his window and observe now and again the dials of the special instruments that had been put into the spacecraft for his own purposes of study. The British-born scientist was a thin, dark man with a perpetually tensed-up look about him and a noticeable twitch below his left eye, a twitch that had grown worse as the long flight progressed and the state of weightlessness had affected him, as it had affected them all. Now and then he made notes on a pad of paper. From quite early in the flight the men had been orbiting in their underwear, discarding the heavy, cumbersome spacesuits whose restrictions would have exhausted them long before the end of their 21-day span had they worn them continually. One by one, time and time again, the tracking stations had come up, friendly voices from a familiar world to keep them in touch and to watch over them and record their progress: the Canaries—
Nigeria—Zanzibar—West Australia—Hawaii—California and back again to mission control at Kennedy . . . from all these places the disembodied voices had called them.
From Kennedy, soon after the start thirteen days before, the families had spoken to them. Gregory Schuster’s wife Mary had come on the air first, feeling a little foolish and self-conscious, not knowing what to talk about in the hearing of so many eavesdropping ears.
“How do you feel, Greg?” she’d asked.
A laugh came down to her and Gregory Schuster’s voice said cheerfully, “Fine, just fine . . . all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! How’s things down there, Mary?”
“Oh,” she said, “fine too . . . we’re okay, Greg, but missing you a lot. The kids are so dam proud, too . . . but I guess I want you home, Greg!”
Again the light laugh, banishing fears. “Why, honey? I’m safe, up here!”
“Safe?”
“No girls, honey. Gee, you couldn’t have me in a safer place, you know that?”
Down there now, in their Florida homes, the two families went on waiting, ticking off the days, none of them aware that the British Defence Intelligence Staff in London was in any way involved with the men in orbit., Mary Schuster was kept busy, as she had been ever since blastoff, answering the endless questions from their three children—Jane, Lester and Jimmy. Questions that had to be answered sanely though she could scarcely concentrate for worry about her husband. The last thirteen days had been a long-drawn nightmare, the remaining days right through to splashdown would be as bad if not worse. In the past Gregory had often said his job was easy, hers the hard one. He would be all right, he had insisted repeatedly, she wasn’t to worry when the day came. Space flights were routine by this time, nothing in them, they had all the answers. The experimental days were long past and soon there would be a commuter service to the moon. But she knew this wasn’t entirely true, that this current flight at all events was the sheerest pioneering and highly experimental; and she had worried—badly. She hadn’t been able to keep back the tears that day when Gregory had driven down to Kennedy for the final checks and routines that had culminated in the blast-off. It hadn’t been so very different with the Morrises either, though Linda Morris was perhaps a mentally tougher and more carefree kind of girl.
Linda Morris was now answering the same kind of questions as Mary—for the hundredth time.
“Mom . . . say, mom—do you expect Pop’s feeling sick?”
“I don’t know, Bobbie. I hope not,” was all she could answer to that one, throwing back her fair hair as she did so and shielding her eyes to look up into the sky ... as if she was expecting to see Skyprobe IV sailing past with a wave from her husband.
“Don’t they get anoxious, mom?” Bobbie persisted.
“Anoxia . . . maybe they do, Bobbie, but that’s not sickness, or is it?”
Bobbie wrinkled his nose. “Gee, I don’t know . . . but if it is, being sick’d be awful messy in the capsule!”
“Will he black out?” This was the elder—Wayne junior.
“No . . . no, of course he won’t.” A hand went to her breast. “Please, Bobbie—both of you—no more questions for a while. Run away and play.” She suddenly felt distracted, as if she’d had a premonition. Unlike her, that. . . . And nothing had gone wrong with any space flight so far, not once the capsule was in orbit, but then there had always to be a first time. That was a cliche if ever there was one, but cliches could be real enough, real enough anyway to a wife for the next eight days. There had been that trouble with the fuel cell, too. She said, “I’ll fix lunch.” The boys nodded abstractedly and she turned and went into the house and a few minutes later she saw them zooming around the garden . . . being spacemen.
Danvers-Marshall hadn’t any children and his wife Katherine was not, currently, in America. At about the same time as Shaw had been in The Goat tavern she had received a cable that had made her book an immediate flight to London and she had flown out from New York to join her mother-in-law in a small village in Suffolk.
* * *
Shaw, his fingers dark with the accumulated dust of ages, was rewarded at last.
He came upon a file of a man who appeared to fit the specification: a man with an appendix scar and a missing left fifth toe. The body measurements, at least as to height, fitted also, so did the details of the teeth in some respects; also the probable age. The man whose file Shaw held in his hand had been Stefan Aleksander Spalinski, then a major in the army of Poland. When the female staff-sergeant brought Spalinski’s service file Shaw found that the man had been trained in Fife in Scotland as a paratrooper and had fought, apparently with some distinction for he had been mentioned in despatches and had a Polish decoration, with a Polish brigade in North Africa and Italy. He had been demobilized in June 1946 and had given his address as 14 Girvan Square, Kilburn.
None of the information on the service file was especially interesting in itself, except possibly for one thing: the dead man had been married during the war to an F.nglish girl named Vanessa Burnside, a widow. According to the pay documents the marriage had taken place on 4th December 1941 when Spalinski had been 34 years of age, and marriage allowance had been credited from that date until the end of his service, together with an allowance for one step-child, female, name Caroline Anne Burnside. There was no follow-up to this information; after demobilization the record ceased. The army, at any rate, had lost interest in Major, by this time Lieutenant-Colonel, S. A. Spalinski.
“Perhaps,” Shaw remarked to the lady staff-sergeant, “security hadn’t quite lost all interest. It might be time well spent finding out.” He sighed; at the time of his so recent death Spalinski—if indeed he had found the right man— could have been a widower, could have been divorced and re-married or could have remained single—or there could be a family waiting at this moment for his return home. . . .
But where, in that case, was home?
When Shaw examined the back files in the Foreign Office’s security section something emerged about home— but again, not very much. He discovered that records, -not p
articularly comprehensive ones, had in fact been kept of all Polish servicemen who had survived the war. Colonel Spalinski had, with his wife and step-daughter, returned to
Poland in the May of 1948, having lived at the Kilbum address until then; and there, the whole known story of Spalinski ended. There was no note of his return to the United Kingdom; this could have been because security had lost interest by that time—or it could have been because Spalinski had re-entered the country under an alias and with false papers.
A visit to 14 Girvan Square, Kilburn, admittedly a long shot after so many years, produced another blank. No-one could recall the Spalinskis.
* * *
Shaw went to talk discreetly with a noted space expert, a small earnest man with a large head and protuberant forehead, a man with a curiously bird-like expression and a high, squeaky voice. This man expounded eruditely on the problems of space travel and the possibility of some interceptory manoeuvre.
After a while Shaw interrupted the discourse. “In your opinion,” he asked carefully, “what could be used to, say, actually bring down a capsule from its orbit . . . and perhaps land it at some selected place by cutting out the normal control of the crew?”
The little man looked at him bleakly. “I can only suggest magic, my dear fellow,” he said. His tone had been highly disparaging, but a train of thought had been started in Shaw’s mind, a train of thought centred on the fact that Skyprobe IV was one of the new generation of spacecraft that made its re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere with its stem section intact. Because that stem section did not detach before re-entry, the capsule would retain its radio and fuel cells right through to splashdown and after . . . for what that was worth as a clue.
FOUR
Late that night the security line, the scrambler that gave direct communication with the Special Services Division, rang in Shaw’s flat. He reached for the phone. “Shaw here,” he said.
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