The Tightrope Men / The Enemy. Desmond Bagley
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was troubled. ‘It’s all right for me,’ he said. ‘I’m going into this with my eyes open – but she’s being conned. Will you guarantee her safety?’
‘Of course I will. She’ll be as safe as though she were in England.’
It was a long time before Denison made his decision. ‘All right,’ he said resignedly. ‘I’ll ask her.’
Carey slapped him lightly on the arm. ‘Which brings us back to Meyrick’s character. As you said – he’s a right bastard. Bear that in mind when you’re handling her.’
‘You want her in Finland,’ said Denison. ‘I don’t. If I really act like her father she’s going to run and hide like she always has. Do you want that?’
‘I can’t say I do,’ said Carey. ‘But lean too far the other way and she’ll know you’re not Meyrick.’
Denison thought of the many ways in which he had hurt Lyn by his apparent forgetfulness. As in the case of her mascot, for instance; he had idly picked it up and asked what it was. ‘But you know,’ said Lyn in astonishment. He had incautiously shaken his head, and she burst out, ‘But you named him.’ There was a hurt look in her eyes. ‘You called him Thread-Bear.’
He laughed sourly. ‘Don’t worry; I’m hurting her enough just by being myself.’
‘It’s settled then,’ said Carey. ‘You have an appointment at Helsinki University tomorrow afternoon with Professor Pentti Kääriänen. Your secretary arranged it.’
‘Who the devil is he?’
‘He was one of Hannu Merikken’s assistants before the war. You are to introduce yourself as Merikken’s son and pump him about what Merikken was doing in his laboratory from 1937 to 1939. I want to find out if there’s been any other leakage about his X-ray researches.’ He paused. ‘Take the girl with you; it adds to your cover.’
‘All right.’ Denison gave Carey a level look. ‘And her name is Lyn. She’s not a bloody puppet; she’s a human being.’
Carey’s answering stare was equally unblinking. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ he said.
Carey watched Denison walk away and waited until he was joined by McCready. He sighed. ‘Sometimes I have moments of quiet desperation.’
McCready suppressed a smile. ‘What is it this time?’
‘See those buildings over there?’
McCready looked across the road. ‘That scrubby lot?’
‘That’s Victoria Terrace – there’s a police station in there now. The authorities wanted to pull it down but the conservationists objected and won their case on architectural grounds.’
‘I don’t see the point.’
‘Well, you see, it was Gestapo Headquarters during the war and it still smells to a lot of Norwegians.’ He paused. ‘I had a session in there once, with a man called Dieter Brun. Not a nice chap. He was killed towards the end of the war. Someone ran him down with a car.’
McCready was quiet because Carey rarely spoke of his past service. ‘I’ve been running around Scandinavia for nearly forty years – Spitzbergen to the Danish-German border, Bergen to the Russo-Finnish border. I’ll be sixty next month,’ said Carey. ‘And the bloody world hasn’t changed, after all.’ There was a note of quiet melancholy in his voice.
Next morning they all flew to Finland.
Lyn Meyrick was worried about her father, which was a new and unwanted experience. Her previous worries in that direction had always been for herself in relation to her father. To worry for her father was something new which gave her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She had been delighted when he suggested that she accompany him to Finland; a delight compounded by the fact that for the first time he was treating her like a grown-up person. He now asked her opinion and deferred to her wishes in a way he had never done before. Diffidently she had fallen in with his wish that she call him by his given name and she was becoming accustomed to it.
However, the delight had been qualified by the presence of Diana Hansen who somehow destroyed that adult feeling and made her feel young and gawky like a schoolgirl. The relationship between Diana and her father puzzled her. At first she had thought they were lovers and had been neither surprised nor shocked. Well, not too shocked. Her father was a man and not all that old, and her mother had not been reticent about the reasons for the divorce. And, yet, she had not thought that Diana Hansen would have been the type to appeal to her father and the relationship seemed oddly cold and almost businesslike.
And there were other things about him that were strange. He would become abstract and remote. This was nothing new because he had always had that ability to switch off in the middle of a conversation which made her feel as though he had dropped a barrier to cut her off. What was new was that he would snap out of these abstracted moments and smile at her in a way he never had before, which made her heart turn over. And he seemed deliberately to put himself out to please her.
And he was losing his memory, too. Not about anything big or important, but about minor things like … like Thread-Bear, for instance. How could a man forget a pun which had caused so much excitement in a little girl? If there was anything about her father that had annoyed her in the past it was his memory for detail – he usually remembered too much for her comfort. It was all very odd.
Anyway, she was glad he had invited her to go to the University to meet the man with the unpronounceable name. He had been hesitant about it, and she said, ‘Why are you going?’
‘It’s just that I want to find out something about my father.’
‘But that’s my grandfather,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m coming.’
It seemed strange to have a grandfather called Hannu Merikken. She sat before the mirror and contemplated herself, making sure that all was in order. I’m not bad-looking, she thought, as she regarded the straight black eyebrows and the grey eyes. Mouth too big, of course. I’m no raving beauty, but I’ll do.
She snatched up her bag and went to the door on the way to meet her father. Then she stopped in mid-pace and thought, What am I thinking of? It’s my father … not … She shook the thought from her and opened the door.
Professor Kääriänen was a jolly, chubby-faced man of about sixty, not at all the dry professorial stick Lyn had imagined. He rose from his desk to greet Denison, and shot out a spate of Finnish. Denison held up his hand in protest: ‘I’m sorry; I have no Finnish.’
Kääriänen raised his eyebrows and said in English, ‘Remarkable!’
Denison shrugged. ‘Is it? I left when I was seventeen. I suppose I spoke Finnish for fifteen years – and I haven’t spoken it for nearly thirty.’ He smiled. ‘You might say my Finnish language muscle has atrophied.’
Kääriänen nodded understandably. ‘Yes, yes; my own German was once quite fluent – but now?’ He spread his hands. ‘So you are Hannu Merikken’s son.’
‘Allow me to introduce my daughter, Lyn.’
Kääriänen came forward, his hands outstretched. ‘And his granddaughter – a great honour. But sit down, please. Would you like coffee?’
‘Thank you; that would be very nice.’
Kääriänen went to the door, spoke to the girl in the other office, and then came back. ‘Your father was a great man, Dr … er … Meyrick.’
Denison nodded. ‘That is my name now. I reverted to the old family name.’
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