Dead or Alive (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  “No, thanks. Good night.” Ross walked into the street, which was tucked away between Oxford Street and Grosvenor Square. It was a calm, cool night, and the freshness was welcome after the warmth of the bar.

  They’d come in Mae’s car; so she’d driven off, or the commissionaire wouldn’t have offered to get a taxi. Yet Ross glanced towards the spot where he had parked the gleaming Lagonda. He walked past the dozen other cars nearby, brisk and purposeful, set-faced. In Grosvenor Square a taxi drew near with its lighted sign on.

  “Taxi!” Ross waved, and the cab pulled up. “Whitehall — just past the Cenotaph, Parliament Street side.”

  He sank back, and still watched the passing cars and the people, saw a Lagonda and peered at it; a man was at the wheel next to a woman much older than Mae. He lit a cigarette, leaned back and closed his eyes.

  A little more than ten minutes later he paid the taxi off and stood near the Cenotaph’s simplicity, glancing up and down — no longer looking for Mae, but making sure that he hadn’t been followed. Then he walked to a narrow street and paused again, to make sure no one took any interest in him. At last he approached a narrow door in the side of one of the big Ministry buildings — a door so small and inconspicuous that many people who passed it daily hardly knew it was there; strangers seldom noticed it. There was a pale light, a flight of stone steps and a handrail. He didn’t go up immediately, but returned to the door and, without showing himself, glanced in each direction. For the first time he felt that he could be sure that he hadn’t been followed.

  He went up four short flights of stairs, and stopped opposite a blank wall. He slid his fingers beneath the rail, and found what seemed to be a tiny crack in the wood. He pressed his finger-nail into this crack, and after a short pause, the ‘wall’ opened, showing a sliding-door, a tiny cubicle, and, through a second door, a large room.

  A big man stood in front of him.

  “Hallo, Bill,” said Ross.

  “Hallo, Peter. You were quick.”

  Ross entered the big room, and was conscious of the thoughtful gaze of the big man, and also of another, smaller man who sat in an easy chair in front of a small coal fire. This nearer end of the room was like that of one in any flat. There was a small table, a bookshelf, an open fireplace with many oddments on it, some photographs, two easy chairs, and, by the side of the oak fender, a pair of leather slippers. In the corner was a large cupboard, the door open; the end of a piece of string hung down. This section of the room was homely and pleasant, in sharp contrast to the other, larger part, where there were cold, green-metal desks, with several telephones on each, a typewriter on one, a greenmetal filing-cabinet, a dictaphone.

  The door slid to behind Ross, as silently as it had opened. He went to the fire and, looking at the smaller man, spread out his hands.

  “Hallo, Gordon. Still at it?”

  Gordon Craigie didn’t answer.

  “We just wanted a cosy little chat with you,” said the big man.

  The word ‘cosy’ jarred, and Ross turned sharply. The big man was smiling amiably. He had a genially ugly face, and was running to fat. His waistcoat was rumpled and spread with tobacco ash. He needed a hair-cut, and that emphasised the grey sides of his head, although at first glance his hair seemed dark.

  “Take a pew.”

  “Thanks,” said Ross, and sat down. “Here we are again, then, the great Gordon Craigie and his brilliant assistant, William Loftus, looking as mysterious as ever. Don’t you two ever get tired of play-acting?”

  “Play-acting?” murmured Loftus.

  “The secret door, sliding-panels, green and red lights, all the fun of the fair,” said Ross, and forced a laugh.

  “Gordon’s fond of the trappings,” said Loftus. “I’ve protested myself, but he has the final answer — they work. Gives the Department a nice feeling of mystery and intrigue, too, which puts us in the right mood. I hope.”

  “Who am I to argue?” asked Ross.

  “That’s right.” Loftus continued to smile.

  Silence fell; Ross found it awkward, and hadn’t found that in this room before. It was rather like the quiet at the Dive, before he’d left. He told himself that it was his imagination, took out a cigarette and stretched his legs, stifled a yawn, and said:

  “What’s it tonight?”

  “Getting tired of it, Peter?” asked Gordon Craigie, almost lazily.

  “My dear chap! What an idea!”

  Loftus said: “Gordon’s a wise old bird, Peter. Why not tell him your troubles?”

  Craigie looked a man in his early sixties; he was actually fifty-two. He had a long face, thin cheeks, a lantern jaw and deep ridges at the sides of his mouth, from which a meerschaum drooped. He wore an old smoking-jacket, his thin grey hair was standing on end at the back, his grey eyes looked tired. But he smiled as Ross looked at him sharply — and reminded Ross exactly of a wise old bird.

  “Now what’s this?” Ross asked.

  Craigie said: “Let’s have a drink, Bill.” Loftus moved to the corner cupboard and busied himself with bottles and glasses. “Peter, you know the kind of job we’re on, and you know you’re good. Probably the best man we have working today, although you haven’t been with us long. I don’t want to spend a lot of time back-slapping, but we need good men, and this job may need a little bit extra from everyone. It needs single-mindedness, too — everything you have.”

  Loftus thrust a whisky and soda into Ross’s hand.

  “Thanks. Meaning what?”

  “What was the trouble between you and Mae tonight?”

  Ross started, and a little of the whisky spilled on his finger. He put the glass down steadily and moistened his lips. He ought to have suspected this, from the manner of the two men. He drew too hard at his cigarette, and was uncomfortably aware of Craigie’s faint smile and the set stare from Loftus.

  “Well, well,” he said, “so it’s really true. Department Z has eyes everywhere. I was fool enough to think that you trusted me.”

  “Ass,” said Loftus.

  “I’m not so sure ...”

  “Idiot,” said Loftus, and gulped down half his drink.

  Craigie chuckled.

  “Both right, and you knew it, Peter. We can’t afford to have anyone running around without being watched, if you were to run into a bus we’d need to know pretty quickly. You might even get a knife in your ribs or a bullet in your chest — and if we have someone watching, it’s even possible that the knife or the bullet wouldn’t get home. You can scoff at the trappings, but you can’t dispense with them in the Service. Don’t get some silly notion that we’re halfhearted about trusting you — there isn’t anything we wouldn’t trust you with, normally.”

  “Normally,” Ross echoed.

  “You had a quarrel of some kind with Mae tonight, and it might have been no more than a tiff, but it could be sufficient to unsettle you. That might justify us in keeping you off a special job, mightn’t it? And if it happened when you were on a job and you started thinking of two things at once, it would make the difference between living and dying.”

  He talked as if this were the most normal subject in the world.

  Ross tossed his drink down.

  “Well, where do we go from here? You didn’t say so, but I had a feeling that you thought I was crazy when I became engaged to Mae. Maybe I was, but I thought you’d washed out that old rule, single men only. Men wouldn’t stay single.”

  “We washed it out,” agreed Craigie. “But we mustn’t take risks. If you’re worried about Mae, you can’t concentrate on this job. We’ve some more news. Professor Conway was kidnapped this afternoon, and we know where they’ve taken him. This is a big job, and you’re the man for it — I hope.”

  3

  ORDERS

  NO one was smiling now.

  Ross looked sharply from Craigie to Loftus, and back again. There was no noticeable change in Craigie’s manner, or in the big man’s, but tension had sprung into the room. Ross didn’t tr
y to break it, when he said softly:

  “So you let them get him.”

  “That’s right,” said Craigie.

  “Knowing you might never get him back.”

  “We’ll get him back.”

  Ross said: “I don’t know what’s come over you. Conway is the man who matters most. We all know that. You might have been justified in taking risks with some of the other back-room boys, but not with Conway. And you can calmly sit there and tell me you know where he’s gone, and my job is to get him back. If they’ve taken Conway, they’ll never let him escape alive.”

  “Losing confidence?” Loftus asked.

  “Just dealing in facts. It was crazy.”

  Craigie said: “We’re at a disadvantage, Peter, because we have to use men who’re still human beings first and agents afterwards. These people don’t. We don’t know yet who they are, but we do know they’ve been trying to get at the air-defence plans of Great Britain, and we also know that those plans include some nifty new inventions and part of the answer to atomic warfare. They include a serum which proofs the human body against radioactive elements, too. They’re vital to our defences. Conway is a five-star genius in this line, but there are other five-star men — three of them working with Conway on this job. His loss would be a nasty blow, but wouldn’t be fatal. It would be fatal if he were to pass on anything he knows — and we can’t be sure what kind of pressure he’ll have to withstand. The wise thing is to assume that he’ll talk under pressure. He mustn’t talk.”

  Ross didn’t speak. He looked older, and his eyes seemed dark, yet appeared to be burning.

  “Understand?” asked Craigie.

  “Yes, I get it. You let them take Conway while I was off duty for a breather, and now you want me to get him back — which is a nice way of saying you want me to kill him, because he might talk. A fine job for a so-called Secret Service man — to kill one of our brighter scientists.”

  “You will probably rescue him alive.”

  “You know I shan’t,” said Ross.

  “If you or anyone else starts out with the conviction that he’s bound to fail, failure’s round the corner. We want you keyed up to do the impossible, Peter.” Craigie spoke very quietly. “We’ve known that Miss Harrison wasn’t too happy about your disappearances on this imaginary test flying, but we didn’t know that she would precipitate a crisis when the job’s just getting properly under way.”

  “You forgot you were dealing with human beings.”

  “We don’t have a chance to forget it,” Craigie said. He was quiet and almost casual, showing no sign of strain. “Harry Marshall had the job of watching Conway this afternoon — he’s now in the mortuary at Scotland Yard, killed by a car near Hyde Park Corner.”

  Ross tightened his lips, and there was a long silence.

  “We’d had Harry covered, or we shouldn’t know where Conway was taken, but the shadow couldn’t get early word to us as well as watch Conway all the time,” Craigie went on at last. “We received a message a little too late. Now we must get Conway back. Can you give your whole mind to it?”

  Ross stood up.

  “Does Sybil Marshall know?”

  “About Harry?” Loftus broke in. “No. I’m going to see her later.”

  “I’ll go,” said Ross. “I know her better.” He stood with his back to the fireplace, and helped himself to another whisky and soda. “Listen, the two of you. Mae doesn’t think I’m a test pilot, and she’s mad because I leave so often at short notice. She’s no fool, and when she makes up her mind to do a thing, she usually does it. Well, I’ll go and see Sybil and then Mae, and tell Mae I shall be out of the country for a bit. That might keep her from probing too far. Now tell me as much as you can about this place where they’ve taken Conway, I’ll need to spend a lot of time studying that.”

  “It’s a river-side bungalow near Shepperton,” Craigie said. “It’s in a turning to the left off the main road, about a mile and a half after Sunbury. The signpost is marked River Lane. There’s a motor launch tied up at the jetty and two fast cars in the garage. They may try to take Conway off tonight, to get him out of the country.”

  “Sure he’s intended to leave the country?”

  “We aren’t sure of anything.”

  Ross laughed; it didn’t sound funny.

  “You’re a pretty good pair! Anyone would think there was all the time in the world. Cancel my trip to Sybil, cancel the second visit to Mae. How do you know Conway hasn’t been taken off already?”

  “The bungalow’s being watched.”

  “And if they make a move before I get there?”

  “We don’t intend to let them take Conway out of the country alive,” said Craigie. “It’s the Devil’s own job, but we think you’re the most likely man to get him back unhurt.”

  “Who’s on the job at the bungalow?”

  “Perry, Williamson, and Brown.”

  “They’ll be under your orders when you arrive,” said Loftus. “Want anyone else?”

  “How many residents at the bungalow?”

  “Two men known, plus Conway, and we haven’t had a report that anyone else has arrived. Some might.”

  “Four of us ought to be enough,” said Ross. “Better have a couple of reserves to throw in, in case things get rough. Usual terms?”

  “You’re on your own, and you can use your own judgement,” said Craigie. “Just get Conway back.”

  “Strike the medal ready for me,” said Ross, and laughed again, on the same hard note. “When are you going to tell me everything?”

  “We have.”

  “These people aren’t Russians?”

  “They’re certainly not Russians, and we haven’t anything to suggest that they’re Reds,” said Craigie. “Just someone who has been trying to get at our air-defence plans for some time — and who’ve killed two of our best men in the process. You know as much as we do, Peter.” He stood up. “Good luck.”

  “I’ll need it,” Ross said. He looked at the whisky bottle, shook his head, lit a cigarette, and went to the wall, which seemed quite blank. “Do your magic, Gordon.”

  Craigie stretched out his right hand and pressed a button in the mantelpiece; immediately the door in the wall slid open. Ross put his hand to his forehead in a mock salute, and went out; he didn’t look back as the doors closed behind him.

  “He’ll do it,” said Craigie.

  “He’ll try.” Loftus poked his fingers through his hair. “This Mae is quite a little lady.”

  “He’ll put her out of his mind for the next few hours.”

  “But not indefinitely,” Loftus said. “You know it as well as I do. We’ve been watching him as if he were our own son, and there’s serious trouble there. Know the way I think we can keep Ross in the game?”

  “What?”

  “Bring Mae in with him. She measures up to everything.”

  “Let’s see how it goes tonight,” said Craigie.

  There was a lull in the traffic in Whitehall when Ross reached it, and London seemed quiet beneath the stars of early May. He could still see the pale shape of the Cenotaph, and the massive squatness of the Ministry buildings. There were few people about, and a string of empty taxis passed him. He walked rapidly towards a side street until he was off the main road and, a few yards along, stopped at a long-nosed Humber Snipe, a gleaming black beauty beneath the light of a street lamp and the yellow glow from the window of a club. A man with a bald head stood with his back to the window.

  Ross got into the car and started off, but he did not put on speed until the car was clear of Victoria. Then he tossed his cigarette out of the window and really moved. He passed everything on the road, including three indignant policemen, who undoubtedly tried to take his number, and headed for Putney. He slowed down and watched the headlights of another car behind him, a car which had been keeping pace with him for the past mile. It slackened speed. He grinned into the driving-mirror, and trod on the accelerator again, took a corner sharply,
swung into a side road, and then jammed on his brakes. A minute later, the other car flashed past the end of this road. Ross waited for two more minutes, turned the car and went back to the main road, taking another route. He had been going for ten minutes, when he saw the headlights of a car behind him, slowed down, and found that the other car also slowed down.

  He didn’t like it.

  He didn’t try to shake the other driver off immediately, except by putting on speed; the Humber had plenty, but the other driver had no difficulty in keeping pace, and lay about a hundred yards behind. Ross swung off the main road into a lane, and waited again, in darkness. He heard the whine as the other car passed. He gave it five minutes this time, then crept out on to the main road. Two or three cars were in sight, but none with the same powerful headlights as the car which had been following him. He travelled at fifty miles an hour and seemed to be crawling, but he wasn’t followed.

  He let himself think — of Conway.

  He knew that Craigie and Loftus, as the leaders of Department Z, had the single duty of counter-espionage in England. He knew them well, had worked with them on and off for years, starting with a job during the war, when he had been parachuted into Occupied France. He knew that the Department was good; that it had worked miracles and achieved the impossible — chiefly because the need for miracles was constantly thrust upon it.

  He knew why they gave him top marks.

  He was the secretive type; that had started from brooding in early boyhood, and the war had got rid of the brooding without dispensing with the secretiveness. He had always known what he wanted and set out to get it with a single-mindedness of purpose which Craigie and Loftus often found necessary. He usually obtained what he wanted — as, two months ago, he had obtained Mae.

  He cut the thought out of his mind.

  He thought of Harry Marshall on a cold stone bench, and of Sybil, his wife — then put that out of his mind, also.

  Professor Conway was brilliant, too brilliant to lose. Atomic weapons and defence against them were the most vital military factors. Craigie had hellish tasks to execute, which meant that he had to give hellish orders. There was no doubt that the Powers That Be had ordered Conway to be killed rather than taken out of England alive. It was ruthless, as the Department was often ruthless, and it might have to be done.