Redcap (22 page)

He dreamed away, horrible dreams, was almost conscious at times of his own snores; he slept so near the surface that when he heard the faint rustle of his door-curtain he awoke immediately, and fully alert.

He remained quite still, held his breath and listened.

There was some one there right enough ... in the faint sea-light creeping through the jalousie he thought he saw the curtain move aside, very gently. He felt under the pillow for his revolver. He wasn’t conscious of having made any noise as he shifted in the bunk, but the curtain dropped at once. Shaw snapped,

“Still or I’ll fire!”

At the same moment he reached out, found the light switch. As light flooded the cabin he saw the curtain move again as though in a draught, and then he fired. The roar and the smell of gunsmoke filled the cabin. There was no movement from outside, no sound at all. Shaw jumped out of bed and ran for the doorway, ripped the curtain aside.

No one there. . . .

He dashed out through the small lobby into the alleyway. There was no sign of anyone who might have come into his cabin, though the alleyway was already coming to life as scared faces peered from doorways; there was a babble of talk, women’s voices frightened, men’s taut but reassuring. They stared at the pyjama-clad figure running fast now along the passage and holding a smoking gun. Women began to cry. A blue-uniformed night-steward, white-faced, hurried up from ahead. He saw the gun, but nervously barred the way.

He said, “Just a minute, sir—just a minute if you please, sir-”

Shaw snapped, “Out of my way. I’ll explain later.” He pushed the man aside, jabbing at him with his gun, and ran on.

It wasn’t—it couldn’t have been—much more than a minute after he’d awoken that Shaw reached Andersson’s cabin and flung back the curtain. A faint snore drifted across. He jabbed at the light switch savagely.

Andersson was in his bunk, flat out, a sheet drawn half across his naked, hairy chest, arms flung wide, chest rising and falling rapidly—as though he was breathless from running. There was a stink of whisky on his breath as Shaw approached. A half-empty bottle stood on the shelf beside the bunk. Shaw jabbed the man with his gun, and Andersson sat up, blinked, looked startled and angry.

He demanded, “What does this mean?”

“Beautifully done,” Shaw said savagely, “but not quite beautiful enough. It means this: you tried to kill me, just as you killed Gresham, and—”

“Really, I don’t—”

“Listen, Karstad. Or Andersson, if you prefer it. I’ll give you thirty seconds. If you haven’t told me by that time exactly what you’re doing aboard this ship, I’ll shoot.”

He held the gun steady at the man’s stomach.

Andersson laughed. He -said calmly, “Really, my dear fellow, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard such a thing . . . you’ll hear more of this—”

“I’m waiting.”

Andersson shrugged. “Then you may go on waiting, if you wish to. I do not believe you will kill an accredited agent of the Swedish Government!” There was a triumphant, confident glitter in the man’s eyes. As Shaw heard a movement behind, he half turned. Two night-stewards were in the doorway and behind them was a master-at-arms and then more heads bobbing about. He heard Andersson say,

“Will you kindly take this man away at once? I shall make my complaint to the Captain in the morning. Meanwhile, I wish to sleep.”

Shaw swallowed.

One of the men came in, took away his gun. Shaw’s eyes blazed with helpless fury, but he shut his mouth tight, said nothing. In front of all these people there was nothing he was permitted to say, nothing that he must give away in self-justification, and again he had no proof of what Andersson must have tried to do. He was taken away from the cabin, along the alleyways past the curious, staring eyes and the rising sound of many voices, was taken up to the Captain’s cabin.

When he had heard Shaw’s story, Sir Donald, looking grim, poured out two stiff whiskies. He said abruptly, “We both need that. Well, now. You
have
made an exhibition of yourself—what?”

Shaw looked up, saw the faint twinkle in the Captain’s eye. He said, “I suppose I have, but I know he came to do me in. There wasn’t anything else I could do.”

“That may be, but the problem is, what am I going to do about you? I can’t appear to let this go altogether.” The Captain rubbed his jaw. “Damned unfortunate you didn’t wait till he’d actually got inside the cabin, and then you could have nailed him for good and all.”

“I meant to, but he heard me go for my gun.”

Sir Donald said, “Well, Shaw, I’ll get the doctor to have a look at you. He knows a certain amount about all this now. He can say you were wandering—in the head, I mean, sudden breakdown, anything you and he can work out together. You needn’t be charged with anything then—it’ll be my job to see to that, anyway. So don’t worry.” He gave a short laugh. “We’ll have to persuade O’Hara not to prescribe hospitalization and landing you at Fremantle!”

Shaw sat back thoughtfully in his armchair. He said slowly, “You know . . . I believe you’ve got something there, sir. Talking about Fremantle, I mean. I’ve been thinking. . . ."

“Well?”'

“I’d better explain fully, hadn’t I?” Shaw told the Captain what the Radio Officer had said about transmissions from the tanker, adding that he himself was satisfied that the
Tungtai’s
wireless room had been unmanned all the time he had been aboard. Since she was, according to the Radio Officer, unlikely to have a secondary transmitting position— a supposition with which the Captain agreed—Shaw’s deduction was the obvious one: that there may have been in fact another transmitter somewhere in the vessel, but that it may not necessarily have been a ship’s set.

He went on, “That set, whatever it was, was apparently sending out those three-letter groups—and REDCAP operates on three-letter groups. Do you see, sir?”

Sir Donald stared. “You mean they were trying to interfere with REDCAP?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t quite see how, or what they meant to do, unless they can jam REDCAP somehow or other, say by making identical signals from outside. Or something far worse . . . actually operating REDCAP by remote control, as it were, and not just using it as a blackmailing tool.”

“Good heavens!” Sir Donald’s ruddy face paled. “You can’t mean——"

“It’s all right, sir, nothing’ll have happened yet. You’ll remember Gresham’s signals, the fake set. Let’s assume they were copied. Well, they’ll have been the ones in use aboard the tanker—Andersson could have handed them over to a contact in Port Said—so they’d have been getting negative results. They could even have arranged that as a test, just to make sure. And I think that may have been what Andersson was after to-night—thought I might have the genuine article in my safe, quite apart from the fact that he’d be wanting to get rid of me anyway.”

“But how would he know the fake set had been rumbled? He wouldn’t even have known it was a fake.”

“There was that cable you sent down, sir. It was Greek to me—had to do with his supposed job as a salesman. But that could have given him the tip.”

“That’s possible. Well, who d’you think was using the transmitter aboard the
Tungtai
, Shaw?”

“Lubin himself.”

Sir Donald nodded rather whitely. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. And we let him get away.” He pulled at his bushy eyebrows. “My God, Shaw, it rather looks as though we’ve messed things up, doesn’t it!”

“I have, sir. Not you.” Shaw’s face was grey and drawn with worry now, and he sat forward earnestly. “Time’s running out now and something else is going to happen pretty soon. They’ve failed so far, just as much as I have, but they’re bound to have other arrangements which they’ll put into effect if the
Tungtai’s
not intercepted. Well—they’ve got from now until REDCAP gets to Bandagong. It would be just as well to cut that time to a minimum, or at least let ’em

think it’s cut. And I’ve got an idea which I believe could work.”

“Go on.”

Shaw explained: “If your carpenters could make a crate exactly the same as the one REDCAP’s in, and fill it with anything they can find that’s heavy enough to correspond exactly with the weight, we could land that at Fremantle. I can arrange with my contact in Sydney to have the arrangements switched—ostensibly, that is—to Fremantle. Meanwhile, the ship goes on, takes the
real
crate round to Sydney, and discharges it as planned. That’ll draw the trail off REDCAP proper, and also draw attention away from the ship, of course.”

Sir Donald said, “Yes, but why not land the real job at Fremantle, and take the fake on to Sydney as a blind?”

“Well, sir, because I’ve a hunch the one landed at Fremantle’s going to come in for a spot of attention. And anyway it’s a little late in the day now to switch full, genuine security precautions. There’s a hell of a lot of route preparation to be done, you see.”

“How’s the word going to reach the other side, Lubin’s people?”

Shaw said, “It won’t take Andersson long to tick over when he sees that crate going ashore in Fremantle. My man in Sydney can arrange a nice little calculated leak too. Well, sir?”

Sir Donald laughed. “It’s certainly all right with me! Only too glad to draw attention away from the ship.” He got up. “I’ll see to it that the crate’s made, as quickly and as secretly as possible.”

“We can assume that the hands concerned are perfectly trustworthy, I take it?”

“Yes, they’ll be all right, Shaw. I’ll have the best men on it, old Company’s trusties. And the job can be done entirely in the hold—no one not directly concerned need know anything about it. Nothing to worry about there. You can leave that side of it to me—I’ll see no one talks!”

“Right, sir.” Shaw hesitated. “I think the ship’ll be in the clear after this, and I could hand over responsibility for REDCAP to the senior MAPIACCIND man, he’s reliable enough, but I’d like to leave the keys with you, sir, if I may—”

“What d’you mean—are you leaving the ship?”

“Yes, sir, I think I’ll go along with that fake job myself. As I said, I’ve a feeling I’ll see something interesting—and that it’ll include Andersson. He’s disembarking at Fremantle anyway, remember. I believe this is where we really bowl him out, once he’s seen the crate going ashore.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. There’s just one other thing, though. It’s time we made sure there’s no danger to the ship —I mean, that bomb business we were worried about earlier. There could be something planted near Number One hold, and whether REDCAP’s there or not, I’m not risking my ship any further, Shaw.”

“I don’t think that’ll be the case, sir. Not now. They’re after something more lethal than that.”

“All the same,” Sir Donald insisted, “I’m going to make sure. It’s not practicable to make an exhaustive search and get everybody wondering, but I’ll pass the word quietly to all Heads of Departments to keep a careful watch in their own sections for anything that looks—well—out of place. That’ll be just as effective.”

When Shaw left the Captain’s quarters he drafted and despatched a long signal to Captain James in Sydney, and soon after that the naval and military commands in various parts of the Commonwealth got busy; there was much telephoning between Canberra, Sydney, Bandagong and Fremantle. Arrangements were made for a military convoy to pass from Fremantle to Bandagong and certain information to this effect was duly leaked by the various senior officers concerned.

During the afternoon, aboard the
New South Wales
, Siggings, in white but grease-stained overalls and carrying a bulky canvas bag of tools and other equipment, made his way towards the manhole into the double bottoms. Just before he got there he was intercepted by the Chief Engineer.

The Chief said, “Oh—Siggings. Going down the D.B.’s?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Well, see, take a good look round.” The Chief tilted his cap and scratched his head. “There’s something up, I don’t know what. Captain’s passed the word that we’re to look out for anything that looks as though it oughtn’t to be where it is. He sounded a bit mysterious . . . anyone’d think we were going to blow up!” He smiled, put a hand on Siggings’s shoulder. “I don’t think any suspicious character’d ever get into the D.B.’s . . . but anyway, lad, if you see anything funny-peculiar, just let me know, eh?”

“Righto, Chief.”

Siggings, whistling between his teeth, went on towards the manhole and wormed his way down. Flat on his stomach in that long, shallow, fetid compartment at the very bottom of the ship, he crawled and dragged himself along to Number Five tank immediately below the vessel’s reactor, where he stopped and fumbled with his canvas bag. He brought out the square metal box. Rolling on to his back, he pressed the base of the box against the steel deckhead, ramming it home hard. The watertight, heat-resistant suckers gripped almost magnetically, and when Siggings gave the box a pull it remained perfectly firm, just as though it had always been there.

He crawled backwards along the tunnel-like space, and soon afterwards he reported to the Chief Engineer that everything was normal in the double bottoms.

At about the same time as Siggings reported all correct, the small thin man was going ashore in a motor-boat from the
Tungtai
, now lying off the north Australian coast. He was going ashore together with a bulky, encased object, a very heavy object which was being handled with great care, to land in a remote spot inshore of Melville Island.

Here, in due course, he was met by two men and escorted to an aircraft which took off immediately. A few hours after this the
Tungtai
, now steaming fast away from the coast, and—genuinely this time—bound once again for the Persian Gulf, was intercepted by a frigate of the Royal Australian -Navy out of Darwin and was searched from truck to keelson.

But by this time it really was too late, and there was absolutely no excuse for holding the tanker.

Early next morning the
New South Wales
made her first Australian landfall and slid into Gage Roads outside Fremantle.

Here she anchored to await the routine immigration and medical inspections by the Commonwealth authorities. These completed, she weighed and proceeded inwards, moving majestically up harbour along the breakwater to edge in to the jetty where she was greeted by a big, cheering crowd. The gangways were sent across. Soon after, Judith was leaning over the fore end of the veranda deck and watching as a big crane moved along rails on the jetty and got into position alongside Number One hold. Shortly after that, the hatch covers came off; a huge container was lifted carefully up and lowered gently on to an army vehicle waiting on the dockside. Shirt-sleeved soldiers in bush hats, big, rangy, sunburned men, started to lash the crate down with heavy rope.