The Tightrope Men / The Enemy. Desmond Bagley
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over him. ‘I see you’ve hurt your side, Dr Meyrick. How did that happen?’
‘A pack of maniacs attacked me in Norway. They seem to have the same breed in Finland, too.’
‘Poor Dr Meyrick,’ mocked the voice. ‘You seem to be continually in trouble. Did you report it to the police?’
‘Of course I did. What else would you expect me to do? And to the British Embassy in Oslo.’ He remembered what Carey had said about Meyrick’s bloody-mindedness, and added irascibly, ‘Bloody incompetents – the lot of them.’
‘Who did you see at the Embassy?’
‘A man called McCready picked me up at the police station and took me to the Embassy. Look, I’ve had enough of this. I’m answering no more questions. None at all.’
The pistol moved languidly. ‘Yes, you will. Did you meet Carey?’
‘No.’
‘You’re a liar.’
‘If you think you know the answers, why ask me the questions? I don’t know anyone called Carey.’
A sigh came out of the darkness. ‘Meyrick, I think you ought to know that we have your daughter.’
Denison tensed, but sat quietly. After a moment he said, ‘Prove it.’
‘Nothing easier.’ The pistol withdrew slowly. ‘Tape recorders are made conveniently small these days, are they not?’ There was a click and a slight hissing noise in the darkness beyond the flashlight, then a man spoke:
‘Now tell me; what’s your father doing here in Finland?’
‘He’s on holiday.’
That was Lyn’s clear voice. Denison recognized it in spite of the slight distortion which was far less than that of a telephone.
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘Who else would tell me?’ She sounded amused.
‘But he went to see Professor Kääriänen this afternoon. That sounds more like business than pleasure.’
‘He wanted to find out something about his father – my grandfather.’
‘What did he want to find out?’
There was a raw silence, then the man said, ‘Come now, Miss Meyrick; nothing will happen, either to you or to your father, if you answer my questions. I assure you that you will be released unharmed.’
A switch snapped and the voices stopped. From the darkness: ‘You see, Dr Meyrick! Of course, I cannot guarantee the truthfulness of my friend regarding his last statement.’ The pistol reappeared, glinting in the light. ‘Now, to return to Mr Carey – what did he have to say?’
‘He hauled me over the coals for being in a road accident,’ said Denison.
The voice sharpened. ‘You can do better than that. Now, having put you and Carey together, I want to know just what you’re doing here in Finland. I want it truthfully, and I want it quickly. And you’d better start thinking seriously of your daughter’s health.’ The gun jerked. ‘Talk!’
Denison was never more conscious of the disadvantages of being naked; it took the pith out of a man. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re here to see the Finnish government.’
‘What about?’
‘A defence project.’
‘Who in the government?’
‘Not really the government,’ said Denison inventively. ‘Someone in the army – in military intelligence.’
‘The name?’ When Denison was silent the gun jerked impatiently. ‘The name, Meyrick.’
Denison was hastily trying to slap together a name that sounded even remotely Finnish. ‘Saarinen.’
‘He’s an architect.’
‘Not this one – this one’s a colonel,’ said Denison, hoping it was a rank in the Finnish army. He was listening intently but heard no sound other than an occasional rustle of clothing from the other side of the bright light.
‘What’s the project?’
‘Electronic espionage – equipment for monitoring Russian broadcasts, especially on military wavelengths.’
There was a long silence. ‘I suppose you know that this is already done.’
‘Not the way I do it,’ said Denison.
‘All right; how do you do it? And let’s not have me extract answers like pulling teeth or that girl of yours might have some of her teeth pulled.’
‘I invented an automatic decoder,’ said Denison. A barrier broke in his mind and a wave of panic and terror swept over him. He felt sweat trickle down his chest and then deliberately pushed the panic back where it had come from – but he retained the words that had come with it.
‘It’s a stochastic process,’ he said, not even knowing what the word meant. ‘A development of the Monte Carlo method. The Russian output is repeatedly sampled and put through a series of transformations at random. Each transformation is compared with a store held in a computer memory – if a match is made a tree branching takes place leading to a further set of transformations. There are a lot of dead ends and it needs a big, fast computer – very powerful.’
The sweat poured off him. He had not understood a word of what he had said.
‘I got most of that,’ said the voice, and Denison thought he detected a touch of awe. ‘You invented this thing?’
‘I developed the circuits and helped with the programming,’ said Denison sullenly.
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand – and this I really have to know. Why give it to the Finns?’
‘We didn’t,’ said Denison. ‘They gave it to us. They developed the basics. They didn’t have the resources to follow up, so they gave it to us.’
‘Professor Kääriänen?’
‘Look,’ said Denison. ‘Let me hear that tape again.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not saying another bloody word until I hear it,’ said Denison stubbornly.
A pause. ‘All right; here’s a re-run.’
The gun vanished and there was a click.
‘Now tell me; what’s your father doing here in Finland?’
‘He’s on holiday.’
Denison strained his ears as he listened to the conversation and evaluated the voices. He raised his hands and slowly parted them so that the link of the handcuffs tightened.
‘He wanted to find out something about his father – my grandfather.’
‘What did he want to find out?’ A pause. ‘Come now, Miss Meyrick; nothing will happen, either to you or to your father, if you ans …’
Denison lunged, moving fast. He had moved his legs under the bed, so that when he moved he was on the balls of his feet and utilizing the maximum thrust of his thighs. His hands were as wide apart as he could spread them and he rammed them forward as though to grab the man by the ears. The link between the handcuffs caught the man right across the larynx.
Both tape recorder and flashlight dropped to the floor; the flashlight rolled, sending grotesque shadows about the room, and the recorder babbled. Denison kept up his pressure on the man’s throat and was aware of cloth as he pressed his hands to his opponent’s face. In the shifting light he saw the glint of metal as