Redcap (27 page)

“Our rights extend to the outer perimeter—”

“Agreed. Rights—but not exclusive territorial rights. You left those behind you, at the gates back there.” He waved a thick-wristed arm down the track, and the headlights glinted on the metal of a revolver in his hand. “You take my advice, you’ll let this bloke show his papers. I’ve just an idea who he is, and if you don’t let him prove it I’ve got blokes here who’ll see you bloody do!” He gestured back at his truck. In it, four Air Force police sat fingering automatic weapons.

The MAPIACCIND man glanced at them, scowled, muttered under his breath and then gave a reluctant order. Shaw was released, but the guns were pointing at him still. Calmly he reached for his wallet, brought out his red-and-green-panelled naval identity card, handed it to the Australian and waited.

The officer examined it, looked keenly at Shaw’s sweaty, dirt-streaked face, and nodded. He said, “Right. That’s what I thought. I reckon you’re just lucky, chum! We were coming to have a yarn with Commandant Mirskov about you, on orders just through from Sydney, but I reckon if we’d got to the gates before you beat it out of there, we wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of contacting you.” He turned threateningly on the MAPIACCIND officer. He said brusquely, “Go on, hop it. We’re taking this bloke in.”

“But I—”

“But nothing!” the Australian roared, his bottom lip jutting out. His voice carried strongly into the thin night air. “I told you, you aren’t in charge around here. Look, if you don’t beggar off fast, I’m gonna run you for using offensive weapons in Australian territory. Reckon I’ve had just about enough of you lot since that flamin’ Act was passed,” he added witheringly, “coming out here and acting as though you’re God Almighty. You go to blazes. And think yourselves lucky you haven’t got a bullet in the backside.” He slewed on his heel. “Into the truck, Commander.”

Shaw grinned. “Thanks!” He jumped in as the MAPIACCIND party glared at him impotently, noticed the pale, scared look of the Commandant’s A.D.C. The argument was carried on for a minute or so and then the Squadron-Leader climbed into the truck, which turned short round in the road and headed away for the airfield. Shaw sat back and relaxed. He said, “It’s a good thing you turned up just when you did.”

The airman grunted. “Those blokes, they get my goat. I love ’em just about as much as the devil loves a priest. So don’t thank me. It was a real pleasure.” He gave a great, gusty laugh. “My word, just to see that bastard’s face was worth a year’s pay!”

Five minutes later Shaw was in the Station Commander’s office making his brief and censored report. Shortly after, he was speaking on the phone to Captain James. He said, “I can’t explain the whole thing in detail just now, sir, but I’d like you to get in touch with London and Geneva at once. Tell them it’s vital that all MAPIACCIND countries should be told to throw-off their adaptors, or they’re going sky-high. And Commandant Mirskov should be arrested as soon as possible. Meanwhile I’m being given a plane and I’ll be at Kingsford Smith soon after daybreak.”

As Shaw banged down the phone, he heard the deep roar of powerful engines revving up outside the office window.

The reaction didn’t come until he was in the plane and roaring south and east for Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport; and then it hit him suddenly and nearly knocked him sideways for a while. His stomach seemed a bath of acid that tore and bit at his guts, made him sick and giddy. The action temporarily suspended, he was a prey to all his nervous selfdoubts. He hadn’t really got very far ahead; he didn’t know where to start looking for Karstad, or for Lubin and that radio set of his, and the MAPIACCIND powers, he knew for certain, would react badly to the idea of any of their associates throwing-off the stockpile adaptors. As Latymer had so rightly said, they were a suspicious lot of bastards. There was still the whole game yet to play, and it had to be played in secrecy even now, for the world’s confidence in MAPIACCIND was all-important to the Agreement’s future.

Shaw’s eyes were stinging, sore and bloodshot as, in the dawn, the plane circled out of a cloudless sky to touch down at Kingsford Smith. As Shaw fastened the clip of his safety-belt his nerve-endings tingled with the thought of what yet lay ahead . . . this was one of the bad moments again, but it would pass all right. It would pass and he would come through, and all would be well, his mind would be alert and cool again.

It had better be.

The plane touched gently. A few moments later Shaw got out, feeling stiff and cold in spite of the climbing morning sun as he walked towards the barrier. Beyond, he saw a tall, angular figure in the blue uniform of the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service.

The girl, who was no beauty but looked deadly efficient, watched his approach, asked impersonally as he came up: “Commander Shaw?”

He smiled tiredly. “That’s me.”

She said, “Captain James sent me. There’s a car outside. I’m Second Officer Harris. You’ll want to get to the office quickly, so let’s get moving, shall we?”

She about-turned and strode away ahead of him. They got into the back of a naval car and as they drove off Shaw glanced sideways at the young woman, asked: “Miss Harris, are you in Captain James’s department?”

She said, “Why yes, I am. Temporarily I’m his Number Two.” She hesitated, then went on: “There’s something I have to tell you. About Commander Foster. He’s—dead.”

She looked at him as he gave a sudden exclamation and twisted in his seat, and she said concernedly: “He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

He was shocked by this sudden news. He said dazedly, “Dead . . . but—my God. Tommy Foster . . . when did this happen—how, why?”

“We don’t know why, but—well, it happened last night as far as we can tell.”

“Go on, please, Miss Harris.”

She said quietly, “He was found in a sack in the harbour. Tied up. They reckon he was dead before he went in. Fetched up by Woolloomooloo, that’s where they got him out.” She added, “London’s been informed by signal.”

He fought down the sick feeling. You had to get used to losing friends . . . he asked after a moment, “Did you know Tommy Foster well, Miss Harris?”

She said, “Well, of course we worked together, there were just the three of us, but I didn’t know him really well. He was a funny bloke, that way. Liked to be by himself, you know what I mean?” Shaw nodded. That was Tommy all right. “Worked a lot on his own, didn’t always say what he was on to, not till he’d got something definite to report. He had some queer friends, too.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I don’t know how you’d put it, really.” She wrinkled up her nose, and the sun, coming through the car’s windows, glinted on her spectacles, showed up the almost man-like structure of her face. “New Australians, some of them, real odd mid-European nationalities. And quite a few down-and-outs, real bums. I suppose he found things out from them, got to know what was going on.”

He asked, “Were there any Chinese among his friends?”

She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

They didn’t talk much after that. They ran under a clear blue sky as the sun came up over the suburbs; ran into Sydney and through Woolloomooloo, and then turned into the naval area, crossing the head of the Captain Cook graving dock into Garden Island and the Naval Yard. The car pulled up outside an office block and Miss Harris led the way past a sentry and a porter and into Captain James’s office, where a small, leathery-faced man in plain clothes, a man who looked more like a jockey than a naval officer, got up to grasp Shaw’s hand. By the look of him, Shaw thought, he’d been up all night and continuously on the go, but his rather sharp features split into a wide grin as he said heartily,

“Glad to meet you at last, Commander!” He added soberly, “Sorry you had to be met with bad news.”

“Yes, sir. Tommy was a good friend of mine.”

“Same here. He was a right bloke, Tommy was. None better.” James broke off abruptly. “Well now, don’t let’s waste any time at all. I reckon you’d better tell me the whole thing for a start, eh? Sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.” Shaw sat on a hard upright chair, mentally contrasted his bare, functional room with Latymer’s sumptuous apartment in the Admiralty. He took a rather crushed cigarette from a paper packet which the Australian chucked over, and then he told James the whole story, particularly mentioning his suspicions about the note concerning Ling’s restaurant. James, who knew the place well, seemed sceptical of this—Ling, he said, was a right bloke, came from a family that had been in Australia for two generations—but apart from this he listened intently, his perky head tilted slightly to one side.

When he had finished, Shaw asked: “What about Mirskov, sir? We should be able to get something out of him when he’s arrested, and then get on Karstad’s track?”

James said, “I’m afraid that avenue’s closed, boy. After your phone call from the airfield, I took it on myself to ring the Station Commander back and ask him to send in an armed party to talk to Commandant Mirskov. I didn’t ask Canberra first, because it was odds on they wouldn’t agree, but I didn’t tell him that . . . anyway, when they got there, Mirskov already had a bullet in his head.”

“Dead?”

“Yep, too right! Station Commander himself saw the body. They were in too much of a panic up there to make any difficulties—in the circumstances. I’d say he either killed himself when he saw the game might be up soon, or one of his pals got him before we did. Anyway—that’s that.”

Shaw said, “Well, there’s something else we can try. There’s a man called Markham aboard the liner. He’s the man who provided Karstad’s alibi the night he killed Gresham. If we haul him in at Melbourne, he may know something. I doubt if he’d have been given much information, but it’s worth following up.”

James nodded and made a note. “I’ll have that done. Sounds as though he’ll have to be charged as an accessory anyhow.” He looked up sharply. “Now—there’s something really bad, I’m afraid. I’ve passed on your message about

throwing-off the adaptors, I did that right away—”

Shaw interrupted bitterly. “Don’t tell me, I know. They didn’t believe it, did they?”

James said shortly, “They’re shaken, but they’re dithering, specially Canberra. That MAPIACCIND territory up at Bandagong, why, it’s a flaming sacred cow to them. They’re terrified of upsetting Geneva. Well, they rang me back a bit later on and I gather they’re mad at what
you’ve
done—the Bandagong people are trying to say you did the Commandant in, for one thing. I’m sorry about it, but I have an idea your name’s mud up in Canberra. And by that time they’d heard about my armed party from the R.A.A.F., so I stink too.” James grinned briefly. “They’ve practically apologized to the Acting Commandant on behalf of both of us!”

Shaw snapped, “They must be crazy.”

“I agree, but there it is. Reckon it’s just a question of time, but we haven’t got much of that. Anyway, I’ve not done with ’em yet. As for Latymer, well, I know he’s doing his best. He said there’s already been high-level talks on scramble lines between the various Governments concerned, but not one of them will listen to any suggestion—yet—of negativing the safeguard unless all the others,
including China
mark you, and Russia, agree too. Which so far they haven’t.”

“Can you beat it!” Shaw’s mouth was hard, bitter.

James shrugged. “I reckon there’s going to be precious little more we can do to change their minds in time, so it’s up to us to find this flaming transmitter and put it out of action. . . He frowned, added: “You know—it’s hard to argue with ’em. Look, Mirskov’s not being taken too black by some of the other Governments, let alone Canberra. They don’t know what to think, but they do know Mirskov was bloody carefully screened before he landed that job.”

“
And
there's the doubts about our original sources,” Shaw groaned. “Yes, I know! It’s just what my chief had to put up with . . . so we’re back right where we started.”

James said, “Not quite. They
are
taking notice now. Besides, we do know one thing for sure now, and we’d better start thinking what we’re going to do about it. You said Lubin’s set has to be pretty close to REDCAP. Well now— that’s something. It narrows the field quite a lot.”

Shaw nodded. “I suppose it narrows it down to the route from Sydney to Bandagong—”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but at least we don’t have to go chasing all over Australia.”

“Yes, but Karstad said it wouldn’t be used in a town, so that cuts out Sydney and Melbourne—”

“There’s other things than towns. The ships keep fairly near the coast in places, coming up to Sydney.” James got up and walked over to a wall map. He studied it for a while, then he said: “Look here.” Shaw went across. James tapped the map and said, “Wilson’s Promontory, on the southern tip of Victoria. The liners out of Melbourne come in pretty close there, not more than a couple of miles off. That’s where they turn up for Sydney.”

“Yes, I get you,” Shaw murmured, studying the map. “You think Lubin could transmit from there?”

“Well, I don’t see why not. And I don’t think we can rule out Sydney or Melbourne either, whatever your pal Karstad said about towns.” James tapped the map. “Anyhow, I’ll put the security people on to it and we’ll go through Sydney and Melbourne with a toothcomb. We can have monitoring vans standing by to pick up any test transmissions as soon as they’re made. If we don’t find the set we’ll reinforce the route up to Bandagong from here with everything I can persuade the services and the police to let me have. Let’s put this in a nutshell. In my opinion, so far as we can see at the moment, we’ve got to consider Sydney and Melbourne as well as the road to Bandagong—and possibly an attempt to transmit from Wilson’s Promontory, which I admit is a biggish area to cover. The Prom’s not just a little hand-land—you can see that on the map. Anyway, I’d say it’s the only point where the job could be done while the ship’s actually at sea.”

Shaw said, “I think it might be a good idea to off-load REDCAP in Melbourne.”

James shook his head. “The authorities won’t play ball, Shaw, not on that. It’d take too long now to do a full-scale rerouting job, with all that that involves. Anyway, I’ll guarantee to have Melbourne gone through very thoroughly and a check made all the way along the port approaches till the ship’s clear of Port Phillip Bay. And I’ll have some blokes down at Wilson’s Prom, too. Right?”