Authors: Philip McCutchan
Shaw shrugged. “We can’t disguise it, there’s been a first-class blunder somewhere. Blit it seems he showed a certain amount of astuteness in arranging his own training programme so that no one man knew too much and got into a position of being able to steal his thunder. It’s just one of those things that only get highlighted when a crisis happens—and it’s easy to be wise after the event.” Staunton scowled. “So England stands to lose the most important link in the chain of these bases, to say nothing of all our lives ... in fact the chances are if this lot goes up the whole damn scheme’s done for, at least for a good many years. Without Ackroyd, they won’t be able to get any other bases going.”
Shaw sighed. Rather helplessly, he asked, “Has anything been done so far to try to stop the fuel unit?” He thought: It’s auto-powered, and the power-supply can’t be cut out independently of the normal stopping process, so there can’t be any question of turning off the juice from outside. . . .
Staunton answered him impatiently. “I’ve had my hands full investigating the Ackroyd business and that body, and I’ve had very little information about the fuel unit, Shaw. The technicalities are nothing to do with me, and I don’t know anything about the damn thing—but so far as I gather they’re completely flummoxed and likely to remain so.”
“Unless we find Ackroyd,” Shaw said quietly.
“Exactly. Unless we find Ackroyd. All we know for certain is that he was seen to leave Dockyard Tunnel for his usual swim at Sandy Bay. That was last night, and to-day we found that body near Europa.” Staunton began getting himself ready for his meeting with the Governor. “My guess is that Ackroyd is in Spain right now, though, that that body’s just some poor bastard they knocked off in Spain and brought in as a red herring.”
That was Shaw’s guess too. He said, “They probably got Ackroyd off by sea, while he was swimming. That’d be easy enough.”
Staunton went off to the meeting of Gibraltar’s top brass after that, but Shaw didn’t go with him—instead, the D.S.O. gave him a car and a security policeman as driver, telling the latter to take the Commander to Dockyard Tunnel and then to the mortuary to have a look at the body.
The car swung into the dockyard’s Ragged Staff gate and turned left for the entrance to the tunnel, where it stopped. The driver said, “Might as well walk it, sir. It’s rough going for a car.”
Shaw nodded and the policeman led the way in beside the narrow-gauge railway track which ran right through the tunnel beneath the rock. Only dimly lit, the tunnel was eerie and cool; stores and workshops opened off it; down here, during the War, the North African landings—Operation Torch—had been planned and directed, the H.Q. operating within the living rock, safe from enemy bombs. Drips of water coming through the porous limestone fell on Shaw as he walked along; and after a while he heard a curious drumming sound, a kind of
dum-da, dum-da
in the now close air, a sound which seemed to echo through the rock and fill the tunnel with its low, regular note. A little after that the guide turned off into a side-tunnel to the right past two armed security guards who checked their passes; and they were issued with the radiation film badges. As they went along the narrow passageway Shaw heard that
dum-da
noise more loudly; and when they entered a compartment leading off the side tunnel and came into Ackroyd’s workshop he saw AFPU ONE, a vast structure seemingly shut in under a lead casing. Behind the dome-shaped pile the control panel on the rock-face showed a multiplicity of dials and lights which dimmed and rose again as Shaw watched. The air in this compartment, whose roof seemed lost in dimness, was musty and stale, and that pulsating in the air drummed uncomfortably on the ears. It gave Shaw the feeling of being under high pressure—a nasty, claustrophobic feeling which made his flesh tingle with a sudden desire to be out of the place and into the clean upper air again.
The white-overalled technician on watch—quite a youngster, red-haired and fresh-faced and keen—came forward, raised an eyebrow at the security policeman.
“All right, mate. Gentleman’s been sent by Major Staunton.”
“Oh . . . okay, then.” The technician looked at Shaw, who smiled in a friendly way, shook his hand, and established his Admiralty status. He asked the man one or two questions, the answers to which, horrifyingly, confirmed the theories which he’d put to Staunton. The technician looked a reliable sort—and the Old Man back in London had told him that all the men on this job had had a severe screening and were all first-class hands. Shaw cut into the man’s technical explanations and asked:
“Is any help being requested from home, now Mr Ackroyd is—gone?”
“Yes, sir. The Admiral’s asked for a team of experts to be flown out from London, but if we can’t stop her I reckon they won’t either.” The youngster opened a panel in the side of AFPU ONE after raising a lead ‘curtain,’ and pointed to a small red button. He said, “That’s what ought to do it —see? Just press that and off she goes. But it won’t work.”
The young man’s face was troubled, as though in some way his own efficiency was at fault. Shaw stretched out a hand and pressed, hard. The red button went right in, quite freely, as though it had no resistance behind it, as though something wasn’t engaging somewhere; it hadn’t the touch of a button which has merely gone a bit screwy as it were, a button which might have jiggled a little in its socket like a faulty bell-push.
Shaw’s face puckered up. In natural bafflement, he said, “Feels almost as though something’s missing somewhere.”
It was just a shot in the dark really, but it brought a response.
The man’s eyes lit up and he said, “Well, sir, that’s just exactly what I’ve been thinking. But I don’t see how it could be . . . unless—” He broke off, uncertainly.
“Go on,” Shaw prompted. “Unless what?”
“Well, sir, Mr Ackroyd, he was—always very touchy about the fuel-producing unit, if you know what I mean.” The youngster spoke awkwardly, hesitantly, a little diffident that he should be critical of his chief.
Shaw helped him out. He said, “Yes, I know, lad. Well—what’s your theory?”
“I was on watch when he was in here last—before he disappeared, see? I don’t think he realized it, but—Look, sir, you come over here a minute.”
Shaw followed him to the remote-control panel. The technician pointed to it. “See, sir? It’s very highly polished; you just look into it. You can see the machine reflected in it.”
“Yes,” Shaw agreed. “You certainly can, and very clearly.” He could see beyond that lead curtain, right to the panel where the red button was. “Well?”
“Well, sir, Mr Ackroyd, he was messing about with the primary starting-panel last night. He didn’t know I was watching, and I wasn’t, not all the time. I was looking at the dials. You have to most of the time when she’s just started up, see. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be at the starting-panel, of course, but I did think he was—well, sort of edgy, and he kept looking in my direction . . . almost as though he was doing something he didn’t ought to.”
“Uh-huh.” Shaw looked searchingly at the man, blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You mean he may have done something to the starting-mechanism?”
“Yes, sir, I do, and that’s honest. I think he may have removed a bit of it. That’s the sort of thing he would do, as you’d see if you’d worked with him. He’s—he was as nice as anything to work for if you kept on letting him see you knew he was brainy, like . . . but he wouldn’t put up with any of what he called interference. I don’t know if you follow, sir? He’s—”
“I think I follow all right. But so far as I know, nothing was found on the body.” An idea had come to Shaw and, though he felt certain that the body wasn’t Ackroyd’s, he knew that it would be just as well if the impression got around that he did believe it was, for this impression would, with any luck, reach Karina through her contacts and help to give her a false confidence. “Didn’t any of this occur to you last night—while Mr Ackroyd was here?”
“No, sir. Wouldn’t have been up to me to say anything if it had, come to that.” He still looked puzzled. “I’ve just been putting two and two together after all this happened and we couldn’t stop her, and a short while ago I remembered what I’d seen, see?”
Shaw nodded. “Told anyone else?”
“Well, I talked it over with my mate.”
“Natural enough,” Shaw murmured. “But for the time being, I want you and your mate to keep dead quiet about this, and in the meantime I’ll see it’s passed on to the proper quarter. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Shaw went back to the fuel unit. “When these London experts get here, won’t they be able to make a spare, if that is what’s happened?”
The man shook his head doubtfully. “There’s no
real
expert except Mr Ackroyd so far as I know—these people, they won’t be properly familiar with it.” He sniffed a little. “You couldn’t strip the mechanism right down anyway, not while she’s working, not unless you’re prepared to commit suicide. I’d say they won’t get results in the time.”
Shaw felt his guts twisting. He asked, “I believe this particular fault was always on the cards, wasn’t it—at least, after you ran her through for test the other day?”
“That’s right.”
“Has it started producing yet?”
“Just started, sir—before we expected her to, but nothing’s been ejected.” The man looked strained.
“I see. Is there any sort of indicator which’ll tell you when the thing’s on the point of—going up?”
“Yes.” The technician led Shaw back to the main remote-control panel, pointed to a bulb set in the centre of it, a bulb which very dimly glowed, a mere thread of redness illuminating its coils. “That’s the primary safety indicator. Far as we know at present, there’s a time-limit anyway to the running of the fuel unit, after which it starts to get dangerous if she’s not switched off for a rest and to cool down, but of course what’s happened now, see, it’s a definite fault—
over
-heating.” He wiped sweat from his face. “None of us know very much about this, mind, but the brighter that light gets the nearer we are to the time to switch off. ’Course, it’s only meant to draw the attention of the man on watch to it—there’s a dial indicator here—see? When the pointer reaches the red line that’s going to be the danger mark—so far as we know, sir. We can’t be absolutely certain because she’s never been run for long before.” He added, “There’s one more warning—a final one. A siren. When that sounds you throw the switches off fast as you can and beat itl That’ll only go if the dials are faulty and under-reading.”
“Uh-huh. These danger indicators weren’t put in just in case this particular situation arose—I mean, this clogging-up fault?”
“Oh, no, sir. They’re just a general indication that she’s getting to the end of her safe running time, that’s all, but they’re all we’ve got to go on—except for a bell which rings if any activity’s released, and that’s a different thing altogether.”
“So, in fact, she
could
go up at any time, really?”
“She could go up this minute for all anyone knows for absolute certain, sir,” the technician said simply, “but I don’t think that’s likely! I think we can rely on those indicators.”
Shaw drew a deep breath. “I hope to God you’re right,” he said heavily.
He knew he hadn’t much time now. Ackroyd and that missing part—if it really was missing, and Shaw felt that that technician was right—had to be found before the red mark was reached, before the H-bomb power-unit reacted to the AGL Six, before that light brightened to a beam of death. . . .
After that Shaw’s policeman guide took him down towards the eastern end of the main tunnel and then past a Security Police guard into a recently blasted footway leading to a cavern which had been christened Admiralty Cave, and which when completed was to be the fuelling base for the nuclear-powered submarines. This footway sloped fairly sharply downward. No steps had yet been cut into it, and descending to the cavern itself was an eerie and rather frightening experience, a groping forward in torchlight down a damp and slithery rock slope so low overhead that Shaw had to bend all the way along, with the torch glinting on still water, deep and dark ahead of them. Admiralty Cave was an enormous underground harbour, with a long channel leading out to the main berths beyond which could be seen, faintly, quite a small entrance open to the sea. Narrow rock ledges ran round the sides of the water, ledges which would in time become the fuelling wharves. The cavern had, of course, existed before blasting operations started; but its extension was an almost incredible feat of excavating skill, and Shaw, walking through to the main berths, could visualize easily enough what this vast place would be like when the atomic submarine base was fully established. There would be, he estimated, room to berth at one and the same time over a hundred big underwater missile-firing craft, with all their ancillaries in the way of stores and offices, rearming and repair yards. He found Project Sinker coming breathtakingly alive now.
When they were coming back up the footway Shaw told his guide that he wanted to have a look at Sandy Bay; walking right along the main tunnel, he went out into the open, down to the beach, looked for a moment thoughtfully at the water where Ackroyd had gone to swim, examined the beach itself in case anything had been dropped or any clues left; failing to find anything, he turned back and they went straight through westward into the dockyard. Soon after Shaw was in the mortuary looking at the corpse which had been found that morning above Europa Point, at the southern tip of the Rock. Somebody, he thought, had done a good job on it. The head was missing, the trunk gaped wide open. Shaw fancied there was already the sickly-sweet smell of decay. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Karina was responsible for this—the man whose body this had been had probably been pushed off Windmill Hill after it was already dead. The body was, as Staunton had said, totally unrecognizable, and only those papers (apart, apparently, from a general similarity of build) had provided any means of identification. Unreliable evidence—the papers were more than likely phoney—Karina wouldn’t kill a useful man like Ackroyd, not so early in the game.