Authors: Nevil Shute
The Director said, “Oh, Honey, I want you to keep
au fait
with what Dr. Scott is doing about this Reindeer accident. Quite a lot has happened over the week-end. To begin with, this radiogram came in on Saturday night.”
He passed the slip across the table. Mr. Honey took it, blinking. It was headed
IVANHO P.Q
.
“What does this word Ivanhoe mean, sir?” he asked, puzzled. “Isn’t that a book or something?” It seemed to him to be some kind of code, and he was intrigued.
“It’s a small town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” the Director said patiently. “It
is
a book as well, but it’s the name of the place Scott sent that cable from.”
“Oh.”
The message read:
Have visited crashed Reindeer but broken stubs of tailplane spars have been removed with hacksaw stop local evidence states that these and other portions of the wreckage were removed by Russian personnel visiting the scene to recover body of M. Oskonikoff for reburial at Moscow stop suggest demand these parts from Russians as difficult country will make finding of port tailplane uncertain if not impossible stop cable further instructions to me at Ivanhoe—Scott.
Mr. Honey handed this back to the Director. “It’s very unfortunate if these parts have been lost,” he said.
“Very,” said the Director dryly. “I spoke to D.R.D. about it yesterday morning as a matter of urgency and, to cut a long story short, a cable about the matter went off yesterday to our Embassy in Moscow. But I’m sorry to say that the Russians don’t seem to be very co-operative in the matter.”
I doubt if he knew more than that himself; it was weeks later that I got something of the story of what had happened in Moscow. The story as I heard it was that Sir Malcolm Howe had rung up M. Serevieff immediately he got the cable and asked for the parts to be sent to England for a further examination. M. Serevieff had countered by saying that he was glad that Sir Malcolm had raised this matter, which was one of some moment. It was certainly the case that the Russian burial party had included certain members of their Accidents Bureau; he could not say whether any parts had been removed and anyway, that was a matter of no importance. What
was
important was that the British Government had tried to trick the Russians, to conceal the evidence of their crime. The body handed to the Russian mission in Labrador was not that of M. Oskonikoff; the dentures did not correspond, and expert examination of the body in Moscow had proved it to be that of a considerably younger man. Would the Ambassador kindly explain this action of the British Government? His manner left no room for doubting that the Russians thought that the accident had been contrived to secure the murder of their Ambassador in a remote place where detection would be difficult, and that the substitution of another body was all part of the plot. Indeed, M. Serevieff said so, in so many words.
I need hardly say that this charge raised considerable stir in diplomatic circles, to the extent that it was impossible even
to try any further to make the Russian disgorge the bits that they had taken from the crash. I don’t know how it all ended; I doubt if anyone outside the Foreign Office and the Cabinet knows that. I only know that, on that Monday morning, the Director with Mr. Honey blinking at his elbow concocted the following cable, which reached me a couple of hours later at Ivanhoe, in the; telegraph office of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:
Foreign Office consider it inadvisable to press for recovery of Reindeer parts from Russians as wider issues are involved stop it is therefore imperative to locate and examine missing port tailplane however long this takes rely on you to do your utmost. R.A.E.
They sent that one off to me, and Mr. Honey went blithely back to his office and the copper-tungsten alloy papers, relieved that he had not been called upon to do something in a matter that held little interest for him.
I got that cable about breakfast time, when by reason of the difference in local time Mr. Honey was just going home to lunch to get Elspeth out of bed for the afternoon. The Mounties called me into their office as we were walking from the store where we had slept again in our hammocks, walking down the sunlit main street of that small Canadian lumber town to the café with the French-speaking waitress. I took the message slip from them and read it in dismay, and showed it to Hennessey and Russell and Stubbs in the middle of the street.
Russell went up in a sheet of flame, rather naturally. “My Christ!” he said. “The British Foreign Office must be nuts. They just don’t know the way we’re fixed out here! If that tailplane came off in the air the way you think it did, it might be twenty miles away from the rest of the machine. How do they think we’re going to find that in this type of country? Do they suppose a street cleaner ’ll find it and bring it in?”
I stared at him in despair. “I don’t know what they think.”
We went and sat down at the stainless bar and ordered flakes and eggs and bacon from the French girl. I studied the message again, and compared it with the copy I had kept of my previous one to the Director. I pointed out to them, “See, I said ‘finding of port tailplane uncertain if not impossible’.”
“You’re darn right,” said Hennessey.
“Well, now they come back with this,” I said. I turned to them. “It just means we’ve got to do our best to find the thing. After all, it’s quite a big unit—over twenty feet long. It might be visible from the air.”
Hennessey said doubtfully, “It’s a chance. It’s a pretty thickly wooded section of the country, though, and spruce and alder, they grow pretty fast this time of year. And all the leaves on, too.”
We talked about it for an hour, and then worked out the following programme. We would go up to the lake again in the Norseman, and trek up again to the scene of the crash, prepared to camp there for four days. We would mark out an area half a mile each way from the crash, one square mile in all, with the crashed Reindeer in the centre, and we would search that area minutely whatever the difficulties. If we did not discover the port tailplane there would be a strong presumption that the unit had come off in the air; it was too big a thing for the Russians to have removed
in toto
. That in itself would lend some substance to the theory of failure in fatigue.
After that area had been searched, we would then return to the lake and begin an air search of the district, flying the Norseman low above the tree-tops endeavouring to see the fallen tailplane, flying on closely parallel strips as in an air survey. None of us had much confidence in this procedure, but it was the only thing that we could do.
“One thing,” said Russell. “We’d better set to work and draft a cable to your chief telling him not to expect too much.” We set to work to do so.
Back in England, Mr. Honey hurried home to lunch with Elspeth. He did not normally go home to lunch because the journey from the office to his house took half an hour, or three-quarters if he was unlucky with his bus, and this meant over an hour spent in travelling alone, whereas his nominal lunch-time was an hour only. So he hurried to get Elspeth out of bed and give her a cold lunch and get her settled in a chair with a book to read before he had to hurry off again back to the office. She told him, “Mrs. Scott came and sat with me a little this morning, Daddy. She said she’d come in and give me tea, and you weren’t to worry because she’d be able to stay here till you got back.”
He said, “That’s very kind of her.”
Elspeth nodded. “She said she’d bring some rock cakes round with her, too.”
“Don’t let her do this washing up,” he said. “And don’t you do it, either. I’ll just leave the things stacked here, and then I’ll do it with the supper things this evening.”
He hurried back to the office, and got in three-quarters of an hour late. In the normal course this would not have mattered and no one would have known, because he worked in a watertight compartment and he was apt to stay late in the evenings so that I, for one, would never have bothered him about small irregularities in timekeeping. As luck would have it, the Director had sent for him at five minutes past two to meet E. P. Prendergast, who had turned up at the R.A.E. shortly before lunch to investigate these allegations about the Reindeer tail. The Director had had to hold Prendergast in play with smooth words till Honey had showed up at ten minutes to three, and neither the Director nor Mr. Prendergast were very pleased about it.
Mr. Honey said breathlessly, “I’m sorry I’m late, sir, I had some personal matters that kept me.”
The Director said, “This is Mr. Prendergast of the Rutland Aircraft Company, Honey. He has come down to look into this matter of the Reindeer tail.” Mr. Honey gazed at the great bulk of the designer apprehensively; Mr. Prendergast did not seem to be in a very good temper. “I have told him the outlines of what we have been doing here. I think, perhaps, if he went with you to your office and you went through the work in detail with him, and bring him back here after that, it would be best.”
Prendergast said, “Certainly. I shall be most interested to hear what Mr. Honey has to say about the Reindeer tail.”
That was about the last thing he said for the next hour, according to Honey. Whatever the little man showed him or explained, the designer did nothing but grunt. This was one of his more offensive techniques; he would stand in silence listening to a halting explanation and then grunt, a grunt expressing an ill-tempered scepticism or plain disbelief. They stood under the great clattering bulk of the Reindeer tail while Honey nervously expounded the harmonics that were being imposed on it; they stood in the office while Honey, nearly in tears by that time, endeavoured to explain his hypothesis of nuclear strain to a designer who knew nothing of the atom and cared less, grunting in disbelief of this newfangled nonsense. He only spoke once, so far as Honey remembers; that was to say, “I understand, then, that there is no experimental evidence at all yet that confirms the truth of all this theory?”
Honey said unhappily, “It’s too early. You can’t rush basic research like everybody here is trying to do.”
The designer grunted.
When finally Mr. Honey took Prendergast back to the Director’s office he was in a state of acute nervous tension, noticed by the Director, who released him as soon as was polite. As the door closed behind him the designer relaxed, and smiled for the first time that afternoon. “Queer customer,” he said.
The Director said politely, “I hope he gave you all the information you need?”
Prendergast grunted. “He gave me plenty of information. Whether any of it’s any good is another matter.” However, when he came to go away he was quite cordial to the Director, almost benign.
The Director did not have time to speculate on that, because as the door closed behind Prendergast, his secretary brought in my cable in reply from Ivanhoe. This read:
Propose search for tailplane an area one square mile around crash intensively estimate this will take four days stop thereafter propose search from air by strip flying an area approximately 100 square miles this may take a fortnight stop am pessimistic of flight search yielding results owing to density of forest growth and recommend all possible pressure on the Russians to surrender parts removed. Scott.
The Director sent for Honey again, who appeared white and nervous and trembling a little in frustrated rage after his hour with Prendergast. The Director showed him this cable; Honey read it without properly taking it in.
“It’s no good putting pressure on me, sir,” he said, nearly weeping, handing it back. “I can’t make this test go any faster.”
The Director said, “I’m not putting pressure on you, Honey. But you’re in charge of the Reindeer tail investigation in Dr. Scott’s absence. I want you to realise the very difficult position that Dr. Scott is in, that’s all.”
Honey flushed angrily. “He’s not in a difficult position. I’m the one who’s in a difficult position, with everybody trying to extract
ad hoc
data from an incomplete piece of basic research. I can’t do my work if you keep on badgering me like this—I’ll have to give up and go somewhere else. First of
all it was Sir Phillip Dolbear and now Prendergast. I’ve got nothing to show to anybody yet, and every time I’m made to look a fool. And Dr. Scott’s as bad as any of them.” He was very much upset.
The Director said, “Mr. Honey, I don’t think you quite realise how much you owe to Dr. Scott. At last Thursday’s meeting with D.R.D. he expressed complete confidence in your estimate of this fatigue failure, in the face of the most damaging attacks, I may say, from both C.A.T.O. and the company. He staked his own reputation on your work. He told the meeting that be thought that you were right, and when he left this country he was confident that if he brought back the parts in question they would prove beyond all doubt that you were right in your diagnosis of the cause of this accident; and that he was right in standing up and putting his whole reputation on your side. Well, now he finds he can’t produce that evidence unless he: finds this tailplane, and in that country that seems to be like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay.”
Honey stared at the cable through his thick glasses. “Oh,” he said, “is that what this means? It wasn’t very clear.”
“That’s exactly what that means,” the Director said shortly. “If you were as good a friend of Dr. Scott as he has been to you, you’d talk about him rather differently.”
Mr. Honey flushed crimson. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly. And then he waved the cable in his hand. “May I take this tonight and think about it?” he inquired. “I’ll let you have it back in the morning, sir.”
The Director shrugged his shoulders; he was tired of Mr. Honey. “If you like.”
Mr. Honey went back to his office distressed and confused. He was a sensitive little man and absurdly grateful to Shirley and to me for the little trivial things that we had done to help him; the Director had hurt him very deeply by what he had said. He stood for ten minutes in humiliated unhappiness in his office, re-reading my cable and re-orientating his ideas; then he went out and caught his bus back home, lost in deep thought.