The Dark Crusader. Alistair MacLean
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job is over. I do not choose that my personal investigators shall also double in the role of executioners.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said lamely. ‘I don’t have the overall –’
‘To continue in your own metaphor, the last button is about to be tied.’ It was exactly as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘This leak – this near disastrous leak, I should say – from our Hepworth Ordinance and Fuel Research Establishment is about to be sealed. Completely and permanently sealed.’ He glanced at the electric clock on the wall. ‘In about four hours’ time, I should say. We may consider it as being in the past. There are those in the cabinet who will sleep well tonight.’
He paused, unclasped his hands, leaned his elbows on the desk and looked at me over steepled fingers.
‘That is to say, they should have been sleeping well tonight.’ He sighed, a faint dry sound. ‘But in these security-ridden days the sources of ministerial insomnia are almost infinite. Hence your recall. Other men, I admit, were available: but, apart from the fact that there is no one else with your precise and, in this case, very necessary qualifications, I have a faint – a very faint – and uneasy feeling that this may not be entirely unconnected with your last assignment.’ He unsteepled his fingers, reached for a pink polythene folder and slid it across the desk to me. ‘Take a look at these, will you?’
I quelled the impulse to wave away the approaching tidal wave of dust, picked up the folder and took out the half-dozen stapled slips of paper inside.
They were cuttings from the overseas vacancy columns of the Daily Telegraph. Each column had the date heavily pencilled in red at the top, the earliest not more than eight months ago: and each of the columns had an advertisement ringed in the same heavy red except for the first column which had three advertisements so marked.
The advertisers were all technical, engineering, chemical or research firms in Australia and New Zealand. The types of people for whom they were advertising were, as would have been expected, specialists in the more advanced fields of modern technology. I had seen such adverts before, from countries all over the world. Experts in aerodynamics, micro-miniaturization, hypersonics, electronics, physics, radar and advanced fuel technologies were at a premium these days. But what made those advertisements different, apart from their common source, was the fact that all those jobs were being offered in a top administrative and directorial capacity, carrying with them what I could only regard as astronomical salaries. I whistled softly and glanced at Colonel Raine, but those ice-green eyes were contemplating some spot in the ceiling about a thousand miles away, so I looked through the columns again, put them back in the folder and slid them across the desk. Compared to the colonel I made a noticeable ripple across the dustpond of the table-top.
‘Eight advertisements,’ the colonel said in his dry quiet voice. ‘Each over a hundred words in length, but you could reproduce them all word for word, if need be. Right, Bentall?’
‘I think I might, sir.’
‘An extraordinary gift,’ he murmured. ‘I envy you. Your comments, Bentall?’
‘That rather delicately worded advertisement for a thrust and propellant specialist to work on aero engines designed for speeds in excess of Mach 10. Properly speaking, there are no such aero engines. Only rocket engines, on which the metallurgical problems have already been solved. They’re after a top-flight fuel boffin, and apart from a handful at some of the major aircraft firms and at a couple of universities every worthwhile fuel specialist in the country works at the Hepworth Research Establishment.’
‘And there may lie the tie-in with your last job.’ He nodded. ‘Just a guess and it could far more easily be wrong than right. Probably a straw from another haystack altogether.’ He doodled in the dust with the tip of his forefinger. ‘What else?’
‘All advertisements from a more or less common source.’ I went on. ‘New Zealand or the Eastern Australian seaboard. All jobs to be filled in a hurry. All offering free and furnished accommodation, house to become the property of the successful applicant, together with salaries at least three times higher than the best of them could expect in this country. They’re obviously after the best brains we have. All specify that the applicants be married but say they’re unable to accommodate children.’
‘Doesn’t that strike you as a trifle unusual?’ Colonel Raine asked idly.
‘No, sir. Quite common for foreign firms to prefer married men. People are often unsettled at first in strange countries and there’s less chance of their packing up and taking the next boat home if they have their families to consider. Those advertisers are paying single fare only. With the money a man could save in the first weeks or months it would be quite impossible to transport his family home.’
‘But there are no families,’ the colonel persisted. ‘Only wives.’
‘Perhaps they’re afraid the patter of tiny feet may distract the highly-paid minds.’ I shrugged. ‘Or limited accommodation. Or the kids to follow later. All it says is “No accommodation for children.”
‘Nothing in all of this strikes you as being in any way sinister?’
‘Superficially, no. With all respect, I question whether it would strike you either, sir. Scores of our best men have been lured overseas in the past years. But if you were to provide me with the information you’re obviously withholding, I might very well begin to see it your way.’
Another momentary tic at the left-hand corner of the mouth, he was really letting himself go today, then he fished out a small dark pipe and started scraping the bowl with a penknife. Without looking up he said: ‘There was a further coincidence that I should have mentioned. All the scientists who accepted those jobs – and their wives – have disappeared. Completely.’
With the last word he gave me a quick up-from-under glance with those arctic eyes, to see how I was taking it. I don’t much like being played cat-and-mouse with, so I gave him back his wooden Indian stare and asked: ‘In this country, en route, or after arrival?’
‘I think maybe you are the right man for the job, Bentall,’ he said inconsequently. ‘All of them left this country. Four seem to have disappeared en route to Australia. From the immigration authorities in New Zealand and Australia we have learned that one landed in Wellington and three others in Sydney. And that’s all they know about them. That’s all any of the authorities in those countries know. They arrived. They vanished. Finished.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘None. Could be several alternatives. I never waste my time guessing, Bentall. All we know – hence, of course, the very great official anxiety – is that though all the men concerned were engaged in industrial research, their unique knowledge could all too easily be put to military uses.’
‘How thorough a search has been made for them, sir?’
‘You can imagine. And I’m led to believe that the police forces in the – ah – antipodes are as efficient as any in the world. But it’s hardly a job for a policeman, eh?’
He leaned back in his chair, puffing dark clouds of foul-smelling smoke into the already overweighted air and looked at me expectantly. I felt tired, irritable and I didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. He was waiting for me to be a bright boy. I supposed I’d better oblige.
‘What am I going out as? A nuclear physicist?’
He patted the arm of his chair. ‘I’ll keep this seat warm for you, my boy. It may be yours some day.’ It’s not easy for an iceberg to sound jovial, but he almost made it. ‘No false colours for you, Bentall. You’re going out as precisely what you were in the days you worked at Hepworth and we discovered your unique gifts in another and slightly less academic field. You’re going out as a specialist in fuel research.’ He extracted a slip of paper from another folder and tossed it across to me. ‘Read all about it. The ninth advertisement. Appeared in the Telegraph a fortnight ago.’
I let the paper lie where it had fallen. I didn’t even look