Terror's Cradle

by Duncan Kyle

`No, he can't,' I said. 'Not without asking his superiors. If he goes high enough, of course, these things can be fixed, but he's not high enough. You can tell by his suit.'

  The man glowered at me for a moment, then went to the telephone and talked into it quietly. A few minutes passed silently, then another man came into the room. I recognized this one, which probably annoyed him. His name was Wemyss (pronounced Weems) and he'd conducted Ministry of Defence briefings for defence correspondents in his time.

  I said, 'Good morning.'

  He nodded. Black jacket and striped trousers, high level professional civil servant doing his three years in this rather distasteful organization before promotion to yet higher things. Ì understand you're being unco-operative, Mr Sellers,' he said, in a rather pained way.

  Ì'm not doing anything,' I said. 'Neither co-operating nor otherwise until I know who I'

  m talking to and why.'

  Ì should have thought it was obvious,' he said mildly. He turned to the man with' the wavy hair. 'You told him who you are?'

  `Yes, sir.'

  I said, 'He says he's an official of the Ministry of Defence `So he is. Such officials do not normally disclose thei names.'

  Òr authorizations?'

  Ì see. Very well.' He snapped his fingers.

  I saw the card briefly as it was flashed resentfully under my nose. It was headed Ministry of Defence and said the bearer was a duly authorized . . . I said, 'I have a feeling this militaristic clown and I don't speak the same language.'

  `Your choice of words is offensive.'

  Às F. E. Smith once said, I am trying to be offensive. He can't help it.'

  The mildness was wearing thin. 'You know who I am?' Ì know your name. Alastair Wemyss. '

  He sighed. 'You shouldn't know even that. However .. . all right. Mr Elliot here is an official of the National Security Agency of the US Government.'

  `That's not how he introduced himself to me.

  `No.' Wemyss looked at me for a moment. He was , an abstracted, scholarly man, and his dislike for his current position showed. He'd much prefer, to be back at Oxford, or out in the glowing light of Civil Service day again. 'You'd better leave us.' The DI5 man left reluctantly, badly wanting another go at me. Elliot remained. Wemyss said, 'Would you mind telling me what you know?'

  `Precious little. I didn't have much chance. I was, only there thirty-six hours.'

  Àll the same. If you please.'

  Àlison Hay has disappeared,' I said, 'and nobody knows where to start looking for her, including me. Including Elliot, and including a Swedish police inspector called Schmid. I was trying to look.'

  `You shouldn't have been there at all.'

  Why not? Because you tied Scown's hands?'

  He said patiently, 'In these matters it is sometimes necessary. How did you discover Miss Hay was, er, missing?' `she rang me up.'

  Wemyss frowned. 'I understood she failed to get through. Elliot?'

  `That's right.' Elliot was totally =emotional watching me through his shiny glasses. 'She didn't get through.'

  Ì do wish you'd help voluntarily, Mr Sellers,' Wemyss said in that pained manner. Ìf I don't?'

  `Let's avoid that attitude.'

  I said, 'Correct me if I'm wrong. I think you've been using Alison Hay. Without her knowledge. As a result she's deep in something she can't handle and probably in very grave danger. Or even dead. Why the hell should I help you.'

  `You have a duty to your country.'

  `Certainly. But not to Elliot's.'

  We have an alliance. You may have noticed. Your plain duty is —'

  `No,' I said. 'Not that way. You tell me what this thing's about and if I can I'll help. But not if it involves further risk to Alison.'

  `That decision is not yours to make.' He kept glancing past me at something and now he did it again. I turned my head. There was a clock on the wall. Ùnless we're back to the days of rack and thumbscrew it's my decision,' I said.

  `Yes. Please empty your pockets.'

  `You're charging me?'

  Ì hope it won't be necessary, Mr Sellers, but you are impeding, quite deliberately, an important matter of state security. As you say, can't put you on the rack, even if I so wished . . Wemyss gave a thin smile. 'But I am entitled to ask to examine your effects.'

  Àll right. Start with that.' I laid a none-too-clean handkerchief on the table. Then the rest : Elliot's gun; my passport, wallet, press card, money, cheque book, keys, notebook, pens, finally the layout photocopies. Elliot recovered

  his gun with a long, easy arm. Wemyss picked up the passport and said, 'There is no entry relating to all this currency.'

  `No.'

  À technical charge, of course, but –'

  I said, 'Don't threaten. I'm interested in Alison Hay. Just Alison. I don't give a damn what she was carrying and I think to make her carry it, whether she knew she was doing it or not, was bloody disgraceful. If there's some way of getting her out of whatever she's in, then I'll help. For the rest, you can get knotted!'

  Ìt's a natural viewpoint,' Wemyss admitted. 'He looked up at me and then his eyes flickered past me to the clock. `But a difficult perspective for – '

  I said, Ìf time's as tight as it seems to be, you're wasting quite a lot of it.'

  `Perhaps.' He'd gone through most of my things and was now unfolding the photocopies.

  'What are these?'

  `Layouts. They're innocent enough.'

  `Why did you copy them?'

  `Because they were there. Because I thought they might tell me something.'

  'Arid they didn't?'

  `No.'

  I folded my arms and decided to say no more. I knew that at least one of those layouts had been done before Alsa left Russia. She'd also brought something out and got rid of it.

  ' These men wanted it, whatever it was. But having got rid of the thing, Alsa was part of the past, expendable, perhaps already expended. Except that Wemyss kept watching the clock.

  Wemyss glanced at me, then said to Elliot, 'Did you bring Miss Hay's belongings?'

  `No.'

  :Better get them sent over.'

  Now Elliot glanced at the clock. 'Okay, but –' `Please be quick.'

  Òkay.' Elliot moved to the telephone.

  Wemyss said, (It means, Mr Sellers, that we must confide in you. At least to some extent.'

  `Good.'

  He shook his head. 'Hardly that. This is extremely important information.'

  Ì shan't pass it on'

  `No?' He shrugged a little. 'Well, perhaps you won't. Let me ask you this : why are you so sure Miss Hay was, as you put it, carrying something?'

  I stared at him. 'You mean she wasn't?'

  Ìt was open to question. Now I'm no longer sure there's any doubt.'

  I said, 'You know it all, surely. The phone call saying she was in danger. The two alleged Frenchmen in the next hotel room who got murdered. Then she vanishes. And the business of being searched before she left Russia.'

  Wemyss said, 'People are sometimes searched before they leave Russia.'

  'To me it adds up.'

  Ànd to me.' He gave his thin smile. 'I wish it didn't.'

  Elliot replaced the phone and crossed the room towards us. `They'll try for the afternoon plane. Swedish police won't like it, though. They weren't too happy in the first place.'

  Wemyss' manner changed abruptly. His, voice was suddenly crisp. 'Sit down, Sellers. And listen.'

  I obeyed, watching him. The scholarly air had departed. He said, 'There is a writer in the Soviet Union whose work is disapproved by the authorities.'

  I said, 'There are quite a number.'

  `Please do not interrupt. This man's name is Daniel Kominsky. You know about this?'

  I nodded. Kominsky was Jewish and had a daughter. He wanted to emigrate to Israel but wouldn't leave his daughter behind in Russia and his daughter was being kept there because her mother wanted her to stay. The Kominskys were divorced. A nasty tangle. The of
ficial Russian line was that Kominsky was free to go, but meanwhile he had no job in Russia and no income and survived on the charity of friends. It was rumoured that his Wife was an officer of the KGB. Nobody knew the daughter's view because she was in a training camp on the Black Sea. The Russians said she didn't want to leave her mother behind. Kominsky said she did. The story had been in and out of the newspapers for months.

  Wemyss said, 'A group of Russian Jews, admirers of Kominsky, apparently decided to exert direct pressure upon the Soviet Government, other methods having failed. In spite of what you may have heard to the contrary, there are still many highly-placed Jews in the Soviet Union. What they did was to acquire a piece of important military information. They then made arrangements to take it out of the country. The plan was to inform the Soviet Government that unless Kominsky and his daughter were allowed to leave the Soviet Union, this information would be passed to the Americans. Clear so far?'

  `Perfectly clear.'

  `Very well. It was not intended that the information should actually reach the Americans. The group of Russian Jews were neither espionage agents nor traitors to their country.'

  I said, 'In that case, how do you know? '

  `There are sources.'

  Òne of them talked. There was a traitor among them.'

  Wemyss said, 'I repeat, it was learned in the West that this . .. ah . .. plan existed. It seems the first courier, carrying the information in some physical form, was on a Russian aircraft which crashed on landing at Vienna three weeks ago. Another means had to be found.'

  Alsa was the other means?'

  Ìt seems likely.'

  `What form did it take, this information?'

  We believe it was photographic. We're not certain.' `What's wrong,' I asked, 'with word of mouth?'

  Wemyss looked at me for a moment. Then he said, 'I

  don't know.'

  `What was the information?'

  'We don't know that either.'

  I said, 'This is bloody stupid!'

  `So we thought at the time. Arrangements had been made by . . . ah, by Mr Elliot's organization, to intercept the courier on the plane at Vienna. The crash, of course, made that impossible.'

  `The crash wasn't accidental?'

  He hesitated. 'The courier was on the aircraft. If the aircraft was deliberately destroyed, the need must have been extraordinarily great.'

  Elliot chimed in. 'A hundred and sixty-three people died.'

  I whistled. 'Surely not. Not even the Russians — '

  Wemyss said, 'The violence of the Russian reaction was enormous. There were a great many arrests inside Russia. We know that. But the Central Intelligence Agency learned, indirectly, from a source within the Soviet Union, that another attempt was being made to smuggle the information out via State Publishing House Number One. It seems likely that Miss Hay was the chosen method.'

  `Why?'

  Elliot said, 'She was there by government arrangement. She was carrying large quantities of photographic material.' Ànd you still don't know what it was?'

  Wemyss lifted his hands and let them fall. 'No, Mr Sellers, we do not. But there can be no question now of its importance.'

  I turned to Elliot. 'These two men in Gothenburg, Maisels and Cohen? They were Jewish. They were part of it, right?'

  He nodded. 'We don't know how they originally planned to get this thing, but it's obvious they finally had to grab her.' ,

  I said savagely, 'And they were murdered! Who by? Your people? The two Americans in the other room at the hotel?'

  Elliot said tightly. 'No, sir. My ,people missed the whole damn' thing. But whoever killed Maisels and Cohen snatched your Miss Hay. That's for damn' sure.'

  I said, 'And who was-that?'

  But I knew the answer before he told me. Alsa was now a prisoner of the Russians. I shuddered. She'd tell them; she'd have no alternative. They'd find out where she'd sent the thing and then finish with her.

  Wemyss said, 'You were right about the pressure of time.'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wemyss was looking at me uncertainly, as well he might. We both knew the way my thoughts were running and that the slight improvement in the atmosphere since the' DI5

  man's departure hadn't affected the basic issue. His difficulty was that I might know something important; in fact, he was sure I did. He also wanted to know, quickly, what it was.

  I didn't know what the snippets of information meant, and I wasn't going to find out sitting there talking to Wemyss and Elliot. Furthermore, even if I could somehow discover the meaning of Aggie Waggie and myopic, I wasn't going to pass on the - information without copper-bottomed guarantees. The Russians in Gothenburg had had Alsa for a whole day now, and wouldn't have been wasting time or sympathy on her. They'd know, by this time, precisely where and how she'd got the lens case away and would have made arrangements to collect. Indeed, the little packet would almost certainly have been delivered already. I groaned inwardly. Alsa was safe only while the Russians did not have the packet. As soon as they had it, they'd dispose of her. They'd have to. They couldn't afford to release her and let her broadcast what they had done. But if I told Wemyss and Elliot what I knew, I had no illusions about the action they'd take. They were after the information Alsa had carried. No more, no less. If a means of persuading the Russians to release her were to arise,

  they'd probably take it. But that wasn't likely. The result was that nobody but me gave a damn what happened to Alsa. No, perhaps I was not quite alone. Scown would care in his own weird way, but even to get to Scown would be difficult and if I did, what could he actually do? It was imperative that somehow I get clear.

  I said, 'Why do you suppose they grabbed her?' `You know as well as I do,' Wemyss said quietly. `Tell me.'

  Elliot said, 'She got the thing away. That's why Maisels and Cohen grabbed her, and it's why the Russians followed suit. The question is, where did she hide it?'

  `What's she like?' Wemyss asked me gently. 'You know her. Have you any idea what she'

  d do?'

  I thought for a moment, trying to manufacture some mental lever. 'She's cool,' I said. '

  Doesn't panic.' `Resourceful?'

  Ì'd say so. She's a damn' good journalist'

  Wemyss looked at me thoughtfully. 'You're in love with her?'

  I avoided it. 'I've known her since she was a little girl.' Was she in love with you?'

  •

  I ducked that one, too. 'How the hell would I know?' `To whom would she run in emergency?'

  `Well, she phoned me.'

  What about Scown?'

  `The wrong man,' I said. 'He thinks only about newspapers. She wouldn't approach him, anyway.'

  `He paid for her schooling. '

  `You've got a file, have you?'

  À poor one. Assembled too quickly,' Wemyss said, regretfully. 'We'd like you to add to it. We'd like to know who her friends are; whether she knows people in Sweden, or anywhere in Scandinavia for that matter. You know her friends?'

  I shrugged. 'Some. The usual Fleet Street people. Her flat's been searched, of course.'

  Òf course.'

  I thought of something suddenly. 'What about the office?' I asked carefully.

  `No. We spoke to Scown

  I said, 'A lot of journalists just about live in the office. Home is somewhere to rest your head.' But I knew why the office hadn't been searched: because Alsa's disappearance was supposed to be secret. So if I could get to the Daily News office .. . I said, 'She'll have a contacts book. Phone numbers and so on.'

  Ìn her desk?'

  `Probably.'

  `Let's go,' Elliot said quickly.

  `You're nuts!' I said.

  `Why's that?'

  `Because the moment you show your face in the Daily News reporters' room, a lot of professionally sensitive noses will begin to twitch.'

  Wemyss said, 'But if we go through Mr Scown?'

  Ìf Scown descended from his eyrie into the reporters'

&nb
sp; room, the whole place would start wondering why.'

  `What you mean,' Wemyss smiled thinly, ìf I understand you, is that your own presence would cause no comment?'

  `They don't even know,' I said, 'that I've resigned.'

  He looked at me doubtfully, but his eyes flickered involuntarily to the clock. I waited while he thought it out; he was eyeing me speculatively, and wondering exactly what I knew. Finally he said, 'You'll have to be accompanied. '

  I rose. 'Come with me yourself.' Knowing he wouldn't. He said, 'I think Mr Elliot.'

  `Not Elliot,' I said.

  `Then it will have to be Wil —' he stopped.

  `Williams, is it?' I asked. 'Or Wilson, or Wilkinson or Wilton?'

  Wemyss said tightly.

  Àll right.'

  He looked at me in some surprise.

  I said, 'At least I don't have to talk to him!'

  , Sitting in the car with Willingham a few minutes later, moving along the Strand and with my property back in ms' pockets, I was trying to work out how he could best be handled. Wemyss had given him firm instructions to remain inconspicuous, but Willingham would be watching me closely all the same. It was now noon, and Jimmy Caulfield, the features editor, would be in the King and. Keys having a revivifying drink. Morning surgery, he called it. Caulfield's office was glass-partitioned and looked out on to the newsroom, and Alsa's desk was about twenty feet away. Also, I had been serious about her desk, if not about her contacts book. If there was a clue to Aggie Waggie and myopic anywhere, that was where I'd find it.

  I let Willingham pay off the cab and went into the Daily News building, nodded to the commissionaire, picked up the house phone and dialled Scown's number. His secretary intercepted, then put me through.

  `What is it?'

  `Bad,' I said. 'Probably very bad. I've got an official circle with me and I'm going to search her desk.' `Want anything?'

  'No. If I do, though—'

  Scown said, 'Let me know. I mean it. '

  He wasn't surprised I was back, but then he wasn't often surprised about anything. I turned and found the commissionaire blocking Willingham's way. A big man. One of two big men who stop undesirables moving beyond the foyer. Both of them ex-Marines, in their fifties perhaps but still formidable. I said, 'Okay Tom, he's with me.' Tom nodded and stepped aside, allowing Willingham to follow me to the lift. Caulfield's office was, as expected, empty. I sat Willingham in it, pointed out which was Alsa's desk and left him. He wasn't happy, but I scarcely expected him to be happy. As I crossed to the desk, his big face was glued to the glass, watching my every step. After a couple of minutes the assistant news editor wandered over. 'Borrowing a lipstick?'