Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)
Page 19
The difficulty, of course, was to get to Spain. I felt I’d lost my status by now; to try to fix a flight via Focal House would be useless. CORPSE would be on to me straightaway, and with them Spain would ring far too many alarm bells. I went into a call-box and rang Gatwick pseudonymously for a flight, in the first instance, to Paris. Just a little deviousness … and I would use my reserve passport, in the name of Watts. But I need not have bothered. By order of the new government, all unauthorised outward flights had been cancelled until further notice. Which I might have guessed, I suppose.
Thinking sourly of the alternatives, such as rowing boats at dead of night from a deserted shore, or sprouting wings, I turned to leave the call-box and came face to face with the CORPSE insignia.
“Commander Shaw, I think?” The voice was guttural: another German.
I said he could think what the hell he liked, and he smirked. Of course, he’d been put on to me by a tail from the Yard, though Ed seen nothing suspicious. I asked what he wanted.
“You will accompany me to your office in Focal House,” he said.
“Why?”
“You are required to take a telephone message,” he said.
“All right,” I said, and made a guess: the submarine operational signal had been cracked already. I obeyed orders; the CORPSE man led me to a car and off we drove for Focal House. There seemed to be more CORPSE uniforms around in the streets now, and I remembered that operations map aboard the Serdar Maru. The contingents would have been coming in all morning and more and more of the fifth column would have been emerging from their dirty little holes and reporting to their quartermasters for kitting-up and to their adjutants to be detailed for duty. I saw one or two nasty little incidents that sickened me: in Victoria Street a squad of uniformed men marched along the pavement in a solid phalanx that got out of the way of no one and an elderly woman was sent flying into the road where she was narrowly missed by a lorry. The lorry, in swerving, ran over a London policeman crossing the road to intervene. My CORPSE driver went right over the blue-clad legs. Along the Victoria Embankment an old down-and-out was being frogmarched past the end of Horse Guards Avenue, and as though keeping time with the step a CORPSE fist descended monotonously and rhythmically on the top of his head. He was crying. A little farther on a girl was being dragged for obvious purposes into the bushes of Embankment Gardens by two of the CORPSE stalwarts. No one appeared willing to interfere. Reaching Local House we all went up in the lilt to the suite, where Mrs Dodge was sitting in company with a fat man in plain clothes and the bulge of a shoulder holster beneath his jacket. She looked scared and miserable, but pleased enough to see me again. She introduced the fat man. “Colonel Calibris,” she said dully. He looked Greek, and was. One of the celebrated Colonels, perhaps. He didn’t say what he’d come for, but I soon found out when a telephone burred and Mrs Dodge answered it, shaking a little as she did so.
“For you, Commander Shaw,” she said. “From CORPSE.”
I took the instrument and recognised the voice of the man in purple coming along the radio telephone hook-up. The voice said, “Good afternoon. Commander Shaw.” In point of fact it was early evening now.
“Good evening,” I said. “Can I help?”
“I believe it would be in your best personal interest if you did, Commander Shaw.”
“I get the message loud and clear,” I said, “but I reckon I’m safe at the moment. In case you didn’t know, a Colonel Calibris is here.”
“I do know.”
“I’m being relieved?”
“No. Not yet. There are matters for you to attend to, and Colonel Calibris is there to see that you don’t step out of line.”
“I feel that’s a nice safeguard,” I said. The man in purple didn’t agree. Colonel Calibris would be withdrawn before any transmissions were made into my guts while as for me, he said, there could, of course, be no withdrawal. I asked, “How do you know I’ve not had an operation?”
“I know this because there has not been the opportunity for you. Your comings and goings have been noted from time to time, and manifestly you are not in bed. Now Colonel Calibris will ensure that there is no operation performed.”
“All right,” l said, “now shall we get down to business? What is it you want?”
“There has been a signal. I think you know about this.”
“Oh?”
The voice grew testy. “Do not stall, Commander Shaw. Time is growing short — ”
“For you, yes.”
He went on regardless, “You know of the signal. The firing of the missiles is not to take place. You know what will happen to you if you fail to have the order to the submarines negatived. I need not remind you.”
“No.” I said, “you needn’t. But the Polaris submarines are way beyond the control of CORPSE, aren’t they? I’d go further: CORPSE is one hundred per cent at their mercy — ”
“But you — ”
“Suppose,” I said loudly, “I’m prepared to sacrifice myself just to get rid of you what then? Remember I was going to do just that until you had Zambellis killed!”
There was a silence; Mrs Dodge was looking as though she were about to faint. Colonel Calibris maintained a blank expression. Breathing sounds came down the telephone from the Clyde, interspersed with crackles and fizzes. The man in purple, though not responsible for the atmospherics, was stymied. I found that satisfactory. But he was not done yet: further threats emerged. Those nuclear-waste ships would be ordered back in within three hours if I failed to negate the Polaris missiles. Their crews would be withdrawn under heavy guard against any interference, though interference was not expected as the coastal areas were largely empty and would empty altogether when it was known that the death-ships were returning, and known it would be because the announcement would be made from the Sendar Maru. And they would be ordered back in whether or not I had been blown up in the interval. I said down the phone, “That may be. But you’ll be a goner in any case, when the submarines blast off.”
“Not so. The Sendar Maru will be withdrawn to sea.”
“I see. When?” I was all glee: it had worked!
“When I so decide, Commander Shaw, and where I so decide. And — ”
“What about the members of the cabinet?” I asked, and tried to strike a bargain. “How about putting them ashore? I know they’re only politicians, but one or two of them are popular. You still have to consider public opinion, haven’t you?”
There was a cynical laugh, but no comment on the value of public opinion to CORPSE. Then he said, “They will be safer aboard the Sendar Maru, Commander Shaw,” and rang off. He was, according to his interpretation of events, correct: but I was going to be much inhibited by those politicians’ presence aboard the Japanese ship and if the worst had to come to the worst they were going to be very unsafe indeed. Once the Sendar Maru was in deep water and I blew the bug she would go down like a brick with no time to get boats away. Zambellis himself had said the bottom would be blown right out of her. However, the tongue-in-cheek signal had done its work well: the Sendar Maru would be nicely away from Britain ere long. Poor bloody British Government. I thought sadly, they’re the one snag left. I turned from the silent telephone to face Colonel Calibris. And also to face the revolver that had now appeared in his hand.
Calibris said, “You will now obey your orders. You will make signals to the British submarines, ordering them to withdraw.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I haven’t the means now. You’ll have to do it yourselves.”
“That will not be possible. We do not know the routines, the laid-down procedures.”
“No,” I said cheerfully. “You don’t, do you? One detail wrong and the Commanding Officers will know it’s not genuine, I really don’t know what you’re going to do about it, Colonel Calibris, nor how you’re going to be absolutely certain of your own safety when I blow up. You have a dilemma. Frankly, I fear the big boss in the Sendar Maru could transmit at any time from now on
out. Don’t you?”
He was putting a good face on it, but I could see he was a worried man who didn’t like his job. I turned away from him to speak to Mrs Dodge, asking if I could borrow her typewriter. I made some remark about sending a memo to Defence Ministry about Polaris submarines, just a bit of bull, then I picked up the heavy office machine and swung it and smashed it very hard into the face of the Greek colonel. His revolver went off and a bullet smacked into the ceiling. Calibris was staggering about, blinded with his own blood, and I kicked the wrist that held the revolver and it spun away across the floor, whence I retrieved it. There was no more fight in Calibris; his teeth had gone, his lips were split, his nose had a crunched and very bloody look and his eyes were bunged up and swelling visibly around the sockets. There was nothing much wrong with the typewriter. Mrs Dodge had her hands over her ears and her mouth was open: field work had never until now come right into the suite. Blundering around, Calibris cannoned into a wall and slid down it to the floor.
I reached down and jerked him to his feet. I said, ‘There’s a washroom next door, and some first aid wherewithals. You’re going to use them, then you’re going to help me leave the country. If you don’t, you die.” From my pocket I brought out the bantam’s egg, and once again blessed Mrs Pontefract’s sense of duty. I believe from the look in Calibris’s eye when he focused through his swellings that he knew what it was, but I made sure by telling him. And I added, “I’m prepared to make the sacrifice. Colonel, believe me. I’ll transmit and blow the two of us to Kingdom Come, and you won’t have a chance of getting far enough away when I do it.”
*
I left instructions with Mrs Dodge that if CORPSE should contact Focal House and ask after me and Calibris, she was to stall them; I knew I could safely leave it to her to dream up the right responses. I left Focal House within twenty minutes of typewritering Calibris, who was looking rather better but not much: blood was oozing through the bandages and his mouth was a mess, but still. Ice had reduced the eye swellings and he could sec after a fashion. The problem still was time, though I was banking hard on some elasticity. I didn’t believe the man in purple would in fact blow the bug for a good while yet. In the living state, I might decide life was valuable enough to make me collaborate with him. As for the death-ships, sure they would come in, but there again I doubted if they would be triggered off until the very last ditch and I wasn’t really anxious about them always provided I could use that little transmitter to sink the Sendar Maru before CORPSE got too worried about the Polaris potential. I shepherded Calibris down to the underground parking area where he had a CORPSE commandeered police car and we set off with siren blaring and blue light flashing for Gatwick. We got through fairly fast: the traffic was thin on the ground by now, I didn’t know why, but deduced from the number of closed signs on the filling stations that current events had interrupted the petrol flow. At Gatwick I kept very close to Calibris, who contacted the CORPSE airport control and demanded a flight to Madrid in the name of the interim government. His appearance caused a stir but he knew that if he aroused any suspicions about me I would transmit: so he was authoritative and loudly dictatorial, and very convincing. That plane was laid on right away, the CORPSE minions falling over themselves to please Calibris and through him the big bosses. Once airborne, Calibris shook like a leaf. He certainly couldn’t get away now, and in Spain he would be cut right off from base and totally out on a limb, with explosive me. As a matter of fact I had no further use for him: once we were at 6D2 headquarters in Madrid I turned him over to our strong-arm section and asked them to lock him up till further notice just in case he came in handy at a later stage.
Then Josip Humo was brought in, still seemingly upset about what had happened to Zambellis. They had been close associates, good mates. He would help all he could against the men who had killed the Zambellis family.
He did, too. I showed him Zambellis’s egg-like transmitter. He had worked on it with Zambellis, and he shared his friend’s views about CORPSE and the WUSWIPP link-up.
“So you know the frequency?’’ I asked. Humo had good enough English.
“Yes, this I know. And how to transmit.”
“And you’ll do it?”
“Yes,” he said. He was a little rat-like man, but there was sincerity and a kind of passion in his eyes: he had liked Zambellis a lot. “I shall do it gladly.”
I mopped my face; I was sweating with relief and with the build-up of tension. Now that I had the means the shortness of time struck home more than ever and I couldn’t wait: CORPSE might surprise us all yet by blowing the death-ships, whatever my earlier thoughts on that subject had been. I asked, “If you transmit from here, will it reach to somewhere off the north of Scotland, say around fourteen hundred miles from here?”
“No.” Humo shook his head. “Zambellis’s transmitter has not the power of that aboard the Sendar Maru. The range is 200 miles only.”
“But Zambellis was — ”
“Zambellis intended to fly to Plymouth.” I fancied for a moment he was about to weep. “He would have been leaving for the airport when he was murdered.”
I said, “Right. That being so, we leave for closer waters pronto. I assume you can transmit from the air if necessary?”
Humo said that would be perfectly possible. I was airborne again, with Josip Humo, within the half-hour, re-armed with a 9mm Stechkin APS having a fully-automatic capability. Everything had been laid on by 6D2 Madrid and I had been given a private plane, an executive jet with a range of around fifteen hundred miles, the crew of which had been placed under my personal orders. I told the pilot to lay off a course far enough to the westward of the Irish coast and to keep low over the sea to ensure the minimum chance of being picked up as an unauthorised flight by the British ground radar. Notwithstanding this, he was to come in later so as to take me over Scottish waters north of the Firth of Clyde, where I would begin the search if the Sendar Maru had not been sighted farther south or off the west of Ireland. En route, I racked my brains for the simple, safe answer. There was as ever the horrid question: did I or did I not blow up the cabinet? And pressing upon me hard was the knowledge that if the man in purple had got the word that I had flown to Madrid he might transmit and blow — not me, but the Sendar Maru with the British cabinet still aboard. I had much faith in Mrs Dodge’s ability to keep CORPSE happy about me, but the CORPSE staff at Gatwick could have contacted the Sendar Maru though in point of fact they had not known my identity. It was fifty-fifty. In the meantime Josip Humo was all ready with that bantam’s egg. Currently he was caressing it like a pet lap-dog, his eyes strangely luminous as he stared down through night skies from the jet’s window. He was looking forward to a big thrill, a big bang that would shatter the killers of Zambellis. But I still didn’t want to shatter the British cabinet. They hadn’t quite deserved that and never mind the lily-livered way they’d trooped aboard the helicopters for the Sendar Maru. No doubt that had been done in perfect faith, in their eyes the only course left for the salvation of millions of Britons; and I had to concede that such widespread death and devastation would hardly be a vote catcher.
There had to be a subterfuge, but what?
*
We came up off the west coast of the Irish Republic and as the first light of dawn brought up the sea below. I searched for the Sendar Maru but without success. When we were approaching County Mayo we altered north-eastwards towards the Clyde, which was standing empty of the Japanese vessel. There was no knowing what course she might be steering, in which area of sea I should choose to look for her. but I had a gut feeling she would be north or north-west, either somewhere around the remote Scottish islands or off Cape Wrath, or heading out into the Atlantic below Iceland perhaps, even as far as Greenland, losing herself in an immensity of sea until Britain saw sense and came to heel, heel being the calling-off of the Polaris fleet and its terrible destructive power. And as we cleared the Clyde northwards my pilot began worrying about his fuel.
“Aye,” one of them said. “There’s two bastards up in Air Traffic Control the noo.” He then looked as though he might have been too forthcoming.
“Just two?” I asked.
“Aye.”
“They’ll not be bothering you for long,” I said, reassured by the involuntary use of the term bastards: I was not dealing with converts or the fifth column. I was surprised the Scots airfield staff had been subdued by just two bastards, but CORPSE had plenty of backing and so far as Stornoway was concerned they were now the bosses nationwide. “That helicopter … I’d like to borrow it. I’d be glad if you’d have it fuelled up to capacity.”
The Scot frowned. “Who’re you, then?”
I said, “I’m part of the strike-back and more than that I can’t tell you for now. I’m asking you to trust me.” Over the men’s shoulders I saw’ movement and I went on, “I’m about to prove I’m not CORPSE if that’s what’s worrying you. Don’t look now, but your two bastards are coming out to give me the once-over. They’re about a hundred yards behind you.” I thought of Mrs Pontefract and I asked, “Are you willing to strike a blow for Scotland?” The answer was yes; and I told the Scots to carry on talking to me and give me cover just fora moment. I brought out my automatic and I lined it up clandestinely on the CORPSE men from between the two Scots and when the CORPSE uniforms were nice and close I blasted them out of existence, emptying the slide smack into them. The Scots, too, were almost swept asunder by the closeness of the discharge and I fancied I smelt a smell of singed cloth. They were very shaken men when they turned and saw the mess, and I apologised for what might seem to them a dirty deed, a shooting of sitting ducks from a hide as it were, but I needn’t have bothered.