Early said just before we disembarked, “Big place. I’ll take you to the Admiral’s office.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I rather think there’s a reception committee lined up.” I gestured down to the tarmac: there was a captain USN waiting, with a lieutenant wearing gold tassels on the left shoulder of his khaki-drill uniform.
Early said, “Jeez, so there is.” He looked disappointed, but managed a smile at Miss Mandrake. “I’ll always be a friendly face in a strange place, remember that.”
She returned the smile, nicely. “Thank you, Nick,” she said. “As you said, it’s a big place, but we’ll see you around sometime.”
“Sure thing.” Colonel Early came out of the aircraft behind us, saluted the naval captain, and yelled at a truck driver. Already I was wet with sweat and feeling sticky and dirty, but we were given no time to wash even. The Captain took us in hand at once and said the Admiral wanted to see me right away and the Flag Lieutenant would take me to him. Miss Mandrake meanwhile would be very welcome in the officers’ mess, and I was dead sure she would be, for there was no other woman on the base except maybe some of the natives from the Candars. I followed the lieutenant to a truck and was ushered into it, growing stickier by the second, and we drove around three miles across the base with a canvas hood thankfully keeping off the direct sunlight, which was the hottest I had ever known. I wondered if this was to do with Nodd; this was not my first visit to the Indian Ocean by a long chalk, but it had never been quite like this. My guide chatted nonstop like Colonel Early, calling me sir every five words which is something I don’t appreciate: it makes a man feel old before his time. You don’t in fact get it much these days, but with some Americans ancient British customs linger and when they’re polite they’re very polite. Seeing my rivers of sweat the lieutenant took pity on me and stopped by at an iced drinks stall where he bought me a nice cold Coke. I like it better with rum, and so, he said, did he; but it was a kindly thought and refreshed me nicely before my meeting with the brass. It shifted some of the dust upon which Diego Garcia seemed to be founded.
Rear-Admiral Rackstall, when I was admitted to the presence, looked mild enough but had a glittering eye and a grating voice, very hoarse. He used it to drive away the lieutenant. “Out, young man, and I’m not to be disturbed, all right?” Then he turned on me, running an eye up and down critically — looking up at me, for he was a short man, thin and scraggy and very brown. His starred shoulder-straps seemed to weigh him down with brass, and his chest bore more medal ribbons than I had ever seen on one man. His hair was as white as frost and he looked, all in all, like the last relic of the Second World War, plus Korea and Viet Nam. He said accusingly, “You’ve been in the Royal Navy, right?”
“Right, sir,” I admitted.
“Well, forget it as of now. The Royal Navy’s okay, but it cuts no ice around these waters, all right?”
A little hard, I thought, since in fact the overall sovereignty of the archipelago was vested in Britain, and never mind the joint-facility aspect. However, Rackstall didn’t really seem to want an answer and he got none; Max had wanted me to be diplomatic. The Admiral walked behind a big desk and sat down, gesturing me to sit opposite him. I was at last cool: the air-conditioning was superb and brought comfort in a wilderness. I began to dry out. Rackstall was no time-waster. He pointed a bony finger at me and said, “You came here to get this Nodd, so get him, right? This I’ll say now and won’t say again: I didn’t ask for you, the Pentagon wished you on me. They seem to think you’re shit hot. I want you to prove that, up to the goddam hilt, right?”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Best’s not good enough, do better. Succeed. I don’t like the word try, glad you didn’t use it. Okay. That’s been said. Now, Colonel Early. Say anything to him?”
“No —”
“Didn’t get the chance, right?” Rackstall grinned. “Early suffers from verbal diarrhoea like he’s drunk all the syrup from all the goddam figs in California. Now, you’ll be thinking I have the same disease, so I’ll stop and ask you to tell me just what you know, all right?”
“All right, sir,” I said, and got down to it right away, giving him the lot. He was a close listener and a good one, and didn’t interrupt once. I began to like him: he was a direct man, a face-to-face man, a man to be trusted. When I’d finished, he said, keeping his eyes on mine as he’d done throughout, that there was something missing from my account.
“Timing,” he said. “Feel the heat when you disembarked?”
I said yes, I’d felt it very strongly.
“Half an hour from noon,” he said. “That’s the way it is. You’ll feel a drop in temperature any minute now — if you’re out in the open, that is. Starts at noon, give or take a half-hour either way. That’s news to you?”
I said it was; I said the reports to date had only indicated a burn-up in the Candars and nothing about timing, though of course I realised in my basically unscientific way that Nodd would have to make his penetration of the ozone layer when the sun was overhead. No point in making it when there was no UV to penetrate and burn. Anyway, Rackstall went on to say that it had been just the last few days that more intense heat had been registered on Diego Garcia and maybe the bullshit channels had clogged up the reports to London.
“Likely enough,” I agreed, reviewing my own memories of service procedures. “And it could fit,” I added. My Avebury contact, Dr Ludwig Ercks from Bonn, would possibly have said that there could be some kind of rub-off from the ozone assault on the Candars, which were not all that far off Diego Garcia. I asked the Admiral about skin cancers.
He said, “My chief medical officer has indicated early skin cancers in those people we brought off the Candars, and that does check with the theory of too much ultra-violet.”
“I’ll be having words with those people,” I said, “with your permission, of course —”
“Sure.”
“And your medics. Also your met men.” I paused. “You said I came here to get this Nodd. Frankly, I doubt if he’s anywhere in the area —”
“He could be, Commander, he could be. Both the Chagos and the Candars are fairly labyrinthine and it’d take a lifetime to check right through with a hundred per cent certainty.”
“Agreed, sir. But Nodd won’t be wanting to burn himself up. If he’s interfering with the ozone layer in some way, I reckon he’s doing it from a position of personal safety.” But even while I was speaking I remembered what Ercks had said: that many scientists would go on to the death; if Nodd was dedicated enough, and being a WUSWIPP man he probably was, then yes, he could be in the region if the success of his operation depended upon some sort of strictly local control. I asked, “Can you tell me more about J. Carleton Roosenbacher, sir?”
“That bum,” the Admiral said. “One of our security failures. We don’t say we’re perfect. Roosenbacher had past communist links and we just didn’t know, which I sure hate to have to admit. But I can’t help you, Commander. When he went berserk around the base, he kept shouting out about this Nodd, Professor Nodd, who was going to destroy American power throughout the world —”
“No indication as to how?”
Rackstall shook his head. “None. And he didn’t say any more after. He passed right out and next morning he clammed right up. When a re-check came back from Washington he was put in arrest and the intention was to have him grilled back home in the States.”
“Where he never got to, of course. You still don’t know where the gunmen came from, the ones that got him?”
“No, other than we assume it was a submarine. I guess it had to be. We’d have intercepted a surface craft, making say for the Candars. We carried out a wide sweep, of course, and landed men on the Candars … and I have to admit our anti-submarine craft didn’t pick up any traces either.”
“So it doesn’t really have to be a submarine?”
“It doesn’t really have to,” Rackstall said with a grim laugh, “but if you ca
n think up any other way, then you should be sitting here and not me. The days of magic are past, Commander!”
*
Rackstall gave me lunch in his quarters, just the two of us, and we continued our discussion. One of the things I wanted to check on as a matter of much urgency was, how had word got out of the base that J. Carleton Roosenbacher had yacked about Nodd and been put in arrest? Naturally, Rackstall had investigated that via his security officers, but nothing had emerged. All the communications staff seemed to be in the clear, but the fact remained, it had to, that somewhere there was a Trojan horse. And that Trojan horse must obviously be a plant of Professor Nodd’s. That was, so long as one accepted the premise that Nodd was behind the killing of Roosenbacher before he could talk further, and to me it seemed a reasonable premise. Did that, then, indicate that Nodd was in fact in the vicinity? Not necessarily: Nodd the scientific brain could keep himself at arm’s length. His rough-up squad would stand between him and the necessities of death, and the distance could be physically great.
After lunch I talked to Rackstall’s chief of security, a Commander USN. Like me, impasse or not, he knew damn well he was harbouring a spy. There was, he said, just one safeguard: draft the whole goddam base home and bring out a new lot. There was another way, I said shortly, and that was to find the plant. It could work out cheaper in the end. He said, equally shortly, that I’d better take it on myself. I said I’d like to, thanks, and might I have a list of names, ranks, jobs and records? That would be the start, and after that I would circulate gently. When I came out from the air-conditioning to reunite with Miss Mandrake, the day, though extremely hot, was less hot than when I’d gone in: Nodd was off duty again. I found Miss Mandrake exiting from the officers’ block with Colonel Early, who gave me a wave.
“Hiya,” he called as I approached. “Just going to show Felicity round the base, okay, Commander?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Another time, maybe — take a rain check? I need her services.”
He shrugged, grinned, gave a mock salute, clasped Miss Mandrake for a hot moment, then turned away in the acceptance of temporary defeat. Many eyes stared from the windows behind: Miss Mandrake was all woman. “Disappointed?” I asked her. “Am I gooseberry?”
“Just the worm that took the Early bird.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, it’s too bloody hot.”
She smiled at me, her eyes melting. “Sorry! I couldn’t resist it. It had to come out sooner or later. So now what?”
“A walk, Felicity, in the shade of the palm trees.” I waved an arm towards the sea. “A geographical exercise. I always like to fix the local geography in my head — it comes in handy in the dark, know what I mean?”
“Nick Early would.”
“Well, that’s not what I meant and you know it. Come on.” I took her arm and led her past the Admiral’s quarters towards the distant sand running silver from the deep blue water. As we walked I asked, “Did you find out anything, any whispers?”
“No,” she said. “They were all too thrilled to have a woman with them. I didn’t give anything away, either. We’re just here to liaise — and I was soon sorry I’d said that, too. Out here, liaise means frat.” She paused. “Actually, I’m an embarrassment. Accommodation, for one thing.”
“That’s easily solved, isn’t it?”
She gave me a look. “Don’t be stupid, Commander Shaw. The Americans are very moral people — until everything gets too much for them. And right here there are nearly six hundred servicemen plus the construction gangs, the Seabees … I’m being accommodated in the Admiral’s spare cabin, which was the word used. With a sentry on the door to preserve my reputation. What’s the Admiral like?” she asked with wicked intent.
“He won’t be bothering you,” I said. “He last sailed in the Armada. Seriously, he’s a good guy.”
“Helpful?”
“So far as he’s able to be, yes, very. But it’s mainly up to us.”
She nodded, and we walked on, and reached the edge of the inner water. Diego Garcia was an atoll, and beyond the outer reefs where the breakers creamed the water was deep: I reflected on those dangerous reefs. That submarine if it had existed would have had to lie off outside, and keep well clear of the coral that would rip her plates open if she should touch. Not an easy operation, and one that would have needed experience. Also, the escaping gunmen would have had some distance to go in their boats before they could reach her. They’d have needed to be nippy … or had the Americans been too slow? If so, why? Another Trojan horse leading the pursuit? My thoughts seethed like the Indian Ocean breaking on the coral; I had a need not to prejudge anything, a need to chuck out any preconceptions. The submarine could have crept into the lagoon via the deep-draught passage, like the U-boat that back in 1939 had despatched the battleship Royal Oak inside the boom at Scapa Flow … or maybe it had lain in wait alongside the 500-foot logistics pier, all nice and handy for a dash to safety after the killing had taken place. Maybe there was no submarine. We walked on, and I kept my eyes open. Here and there I noticed some apparent scorching of the palm trees that fringed the lagoon — Nodd’s UV? There was a coconut plantation, used no longer for production, and here again there was more scorching and blackening. There were also signs of death: we came across a wild donkey, very dead at the edge of the tropical undergrowth, and there seemed to be some burning of the hair and flesh, just noticeable amongst the fast spread of putrefaction in which clusters of maggots writhed. Farther on we found land crabs, equally dead. If all this was due to Nodd, then maybe his testing days on the Candars were already over, and he was moving against his target, his first action target — or again maybe, my earlier thoughts about a rub-off from the Candars were still viable …
Miss Mandrake broke into my reflections. “One thing I did pick up.”
“Go on.”
“They’re worried about their future here, and I mean politically.”
I said, “Not surprising. The Russians don’t like the proximity — the communications facility for the nuclear subs. The Poseidon missiles are nicely placed for dropping on the Kremlin!” Russian pressure had nearly got the base demilitarised back in ’77 — but now the Kremlin could see Nodd as a better bet than political pressures, perhaps.
“There’s the emergent African states, too.”
“Quite. They see the base as part of an Indian Ocean arms race. I gathered from Rackstall at lunch that that’s partly why he hasn’t saturated the Candars with good US bombs! He has enough fire in him to see that as the best way of settling any funny Nodd business … but knows he has to keep his political masters happy and not upset any international apple-carts.”
She gave me a sideways look, a searching one. “Do you think he’ll stick to that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so, since I have a similar need myself, or Max has anyway if he doesn’t want to see 6D2 subject to questions in the House. But Rackstall wants fast results, and if he doesn’t get them, well …”
“All right,” she said. “I get the drift.”
*
We walked quite a long way, too long really in such heat, and we were two melting greasespots when we had circled back into the base proper. The Stars and Stripes drooped, limp as a rag, from the flagpole outside the Admiral’s quarters. Out from a door behind it came Commander Warfield, the security chief, with a file of papers which he waved at me.
“Been looking for you. Got what you asked for.” He thrust the file at me. “All yours, Commander. I wish you luck. Use my office. Want me with you while you read?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll manage. Any queries, I’ll shout. All right?”
“Fine,” he said, and gave me directions to reach his office in the admin building. With Miss Mandrake, I made tracks. Warfield had a biggish staff: in his outer office was a lieutenant-commander, three lieutenants, one senior grade and two junior grade, and a brace of ensigns plus chief petty officers and clerks. I was accosted, but my way
had been prepared and I was admitted to Warfield’s private office, which was empty.
I dumped the file on the desk and opened it. The base complement was all there, divided into the two main heads of naval personnel and Seabees. And then subdivided into the various kinds of construction workers and navy categories, the latter being communications, seaman specialists, cooks and stewards, supply, and medical. Plus, of course, security and MPs. A quick check out of alphabetical order indicated Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Forster Early, USMC, as being attached for logistics duties. In other words, and among other things, OC Pier. I pondered that one, but only briefly: when the killing and the escape had taken place, Early had been way back home in Michigan, or maybe Paris, France. And I doubt if Nodd would have put much trust in him in any case. I don’t know if twit is a word of much circulation in the United States, and Admiral Rackstall certainly hadn’t used it, but I’d got the general idea. It grated in a sense, for the US Marine Corps is pretty elite even today, but there it was. Even the Brigade of Guards has its twit quota.
I checked all through thirteen hundred names, scanning their service records, especially concentrating on the communications staff. Something just might emerge to ring a bell from the past, but it was a long shot — too long a shot: I didn’t learn a thing, except that, of course, they all had a security clearance that put them above suspicion, but to me that was far from conclusive. And it was not just on that ‘long shot’ level that I studied Warfield’s list with such diligence. I wanted the word to get around that I was thoroughly and minutely sifting, taking my time, that I was as shit hot as the Rear-Admiral had been informed I was. I wouldn’t have minded betting there were some loud mouths among the security clerks outside, as loud, indeed, as Nick Early.
Sunstrike_The next gripping Commander Shaw thriller Page 6
