‘I telephoned Mr Gorman in the fisheries office. He said no one’s asked him for the tide tables for Staffa since the war. Doubts any one’s been there in that long except the odd torpedoed Nazi. Ka-pow!’ he added, pointing his index finger at her like a cocked gun. ‘Anyway, high tide on Staffa is at four a.m. and two p.m.’
‘That’ll be enough of that, Tommy Connery,’ said the innkeeper’s wife, bustling up and changing Jane’s overflowing ashtray for a fresh one. She turned to Jane and smiled. ‘If he gives you any trouble, Miss Todd, you just give him a good swat on the fundament and send him packing.’ She turned to the boy. ‘Didn’t I tell you to bring in those kegs?!’
‘Yes, Auntie,’ said the boy.
‘He’s got some information I’ve been looking for. It’s all right, Mrs Maclean.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ But she didn’t look convinced. ‘More tea then, Miss Todd?’
‘Sure, why not,’ said Jane. The woman nodded, wiped her hands on her snow-white apron and headed back into the kitchen.
‘It’s not the tides around here, either,’ said the boy. ‘I checked that too. Nothing even close to midnight for high tides on Mull. Eight or nine in the morning this time of the year, depending on where you are. Seven or eight in the evening. That’s when the excursion steamers go back to Oban.’
‘Shit,’ said Jane and she stubbed out her cigarette.
The boy looked startled at her use of a swear word. ‘Beg pardon, miss?’
‘Nothing. Thanks for the information.’
‘Right-oh,’ said the boy. He flexed his forearm so that the tiger seemed to jump out at her then winked. He turned and sauntered away, the paperbound Western peeking out of the back pocket of his trousers.
‘Now what?’ said Jane. Tweedsmuir had seemed so sure and his explanation fit all the facts: the exchange would be made at Fingal’s Cave on the Island of Staffa at midnight tonight. But somehow either the facts or the explanation were wrong. Something was going to happen today at midnight, somewhere. On top of that was the fact that Dundee was still missing. She knew in her heart that he was probably either dead or he’d been part of the whole plot, right from the beginning, just like Occleshaw thought.
She frowned into her empty teacup and lit yet another cigarette. Outside the weather was closing in, the leaden skies meeting the equally grey horizon, snatches of rain gusting icily against the window glass. In the distance the shadow of the ruined castle on the point had almost disappeared.
It was all wrong; her instincts about people were usually good and the only thing she’d picked up from Dundee was an irritating case of lust. She seriously doubted that there was a devious bone in his body: Mr Smith Goes to Washington in a uniform. On the other hand he seemed to have a pretty low opinion of her, assuming that she was spying on him for Donovan. Then he disappears into the blue, or actually into the dead of night, presumably at Charles Danby’s request. Why would Danby want him dead and, more importantly, how did Charles Danby know that Dundee was on that train? She might have put it all down to a nightmare if it hadn’t been for the dead woman in her bedroom. Where did she fit into all of this? She sighed, clambered into the old belted-tweed coat Tweedsmuir had given her and went out into the stinging rain. Putting up the collar of the coat, she headed down the high street to the crossroads by the beach.
A big Harley-Davidson WLA was at the corner, its goggled and uniformed driver checking the signs. There were a rifle bucket and siren in front of the windscreen and heavy-duty box-style courier panniers over the rear wheel. The words Military Police were stencilled in white on the windscreen. As he turned to glance at her, Jane saw the letters MP on his helmet. The man looked away, kicked the big bike into gear and turned down the narrow track to Killiechronan.
She wondered what an American Military Policeman was doing in an out-of-the-way spot like Mull; probably looking for one of Danby’s deserters or some love-struck kid who’d gone AWOL for the affections of some equally love-struck young Highland girl. Jane turned in the opposite direction, towards the pier and the beach, putting it out of her mind; she had bigger problems, not the least of which was figuring out who she should tell about her situation before it was too late. In a few hours the crown jewels would be gone and she had to do something to stop that from happening. She walked out onto the pier where there were half a dozen fishing boats tied up, taking off boxes of flounder and curved traps full of dark-shelled lobster. They’d been out since dawn and they were already back, eager to get out of the rain. Jane noticed that the majority of the men were in their forties, fifties or even older, the war was taking its toll, even here. She stood and watched them for a minute as they unloaded the catch. Then she made up her mind. She and Angus couldn’t do any more alone and the only person left was Occleshaw. She’d go back to the hotel, find out where the local cops were and give herself up. The local constabulary could call Scotland Yard and they in turn could get to Special Branch; it was the only way, no matter what kind of trouble it got her into.
She turned around and ran directly into Commander Ian Fleming, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He was wearing a navy pea jacket and an able seaman’s knit cap. He looked quite roguish, which, if Jane knew her man, was the desired effect, especially on women.
’‘Hello, Jane.’ He grinned. He nodded to his left. ‘I think this is the man you want to be bumping into.’ She turned and looked; he was wearing rubber boots, a navy sweater and baggy trousers. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in ages and he appeared to have soot under his fingernails. He looked ridiculous.
‘Lucas!’ she breathed. Laughing, she threw her arms around the man and kissed him, hard.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The three had come in out of the rain and were sitting beside the fire in the pub at the Tangle. Tommy Connery had descended into the basement through a trapdoor and could be heard wrestling the heavy kegs of ale into position under the brass plumbing that ran down from the ivory taps. Fleming was drinking gin against the chill and Jane had convinced Tommy’s aunt to make coffee for her and Dundee. She sat beside the major, her leg pressed up against his from ankle to thigh underneath the small table. He didn’t make the slightest attempt to do anything about it. A few feet away a bay window looked out onto the high street. The misting rain was still blowing in from the sea, turning the panes to slow-running tears that carved weeping paths down to the bottom of the glass.
‘We figured most of this out last night in Oban after I burned down Danby’s mansion by the loch,’ said Dundee. ‘The rest of it fell into place while we were on the ferry coming over here this morning.’
‘Burning down a mansion? You’ve been busy.’
‘I’ve had quite a time, that’s for sure. How about you?’ Dundee smiled.
‘Remind me to tell you sometime. Tell me if you want to start with the woman getting the pencil stuck in her eye or the man shooting at me while I was hanging under a bridge about five hundred feet in the air.’ At the mention of Moneypenny’s brutal murder Fleming frowned and the line of his jaw hardened. Jane sensed that at one time or another the woman on the train had been more to him than just an acquaintance.
He took a long swallow of gin and put his glass down on the table firmly. ‘I really think we should be getting on. We’re going to have serious problems unless we figure out this last bit.’
‘You’re right. Shoot,’ said Dundee.
Fleming turned his attention to Jane. ‘Have you ever heard of a man named Alan Turing?’
‘No.’
‘Bletchley Park?’
‘No.’
‘Tube Alloys?’
‘No,’ said Jane and she laughed. ‘What are you talking about, Commander?’
Fleming rubbed his thumb across the side of his glass and stared into the clear contents as though he somehow expected to find answers in the gin. ‘Alan Turing has invented rather a special kind of machine,’ he said, collecting his thoughts. ‘It’s given us a leg up on the German
military codes. Several legs up, actually. Several years ago, right at the start of the war, your friend Morris Black was investigating a series of murders. A German spy named The Doctor became involved; it all gets rather complicated after that. The point is Hitler almost found out we’d cracked his bloody codes and it was really only blind luck and your friend Morris who saved Britain’s bacon, so to speak.’ He paused, letting out a long breath, then took another belt of gin. ‘I could probably be sacked for telling you all this but it’s too late for that now.’
‘I promise not to say a thing,’ said Jane.
Fleming snorted. ‘The word of a journalist!’
‘Go on,’ snapped Dundee. ‘We both know she’s more than that.’
‘All right.’ Fleming cleared his throat. ‘Part of the problem then, one of the key problems, was that all of Turing’s activities, and the work done by the people at Bletchley Park who were actually breaking the codes, was put on file at the PRO, the Public Records Office. We have the same problem again, except now it’s Tube Alloys as well.’
’What are Tube Alloys?’ said Jane, a little perplexed.
Fleming shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘I’m not entirely sure but it seems to be something even more important than Mr Turing’s invention. I’ve been advised that one or the other, or both, are capable of winning the war for us, or losing it if word gets out. Unfortunately, that’s what’s happened.’
‘What about the Crown and the Sword? I thought we were chasing after the Crown Jewels?’
‘Quite.’ Fleming nodded. ‘Which was exactly what Danby wanted all of us to think. Meanwhile he was sneaking Turing’s code-breaking information and Tube Alloys out the back door. Or front door as it turns out.’ Fleming finished his gin. ‘One doesn’t bother closing the stable door after the prize stallion has run off so it makes it all the easier to steal the mare, if you see what I mean.’
‘A diversion?’
‘I’m afraid so. There’s some evidence he was going to try to pawn off a copy of the jewels to Schellenberg and the rest of Hitler’s louts but the secret materiel was going to be auctioned off in Switzerland.
‘It turns out that Charlie was working for Donovan, almost from the start. After a trip to Germany he tried to turn his own father in to the FBI and when they weren’t interested he went to Wild Bill. When the opportunity came up they asked him to infiltrate the fascist organisations in England that were busy helping the Germans. He jumped at the chance but in the end the idea of making money out of it was too much temptation for the son of a bitch. He knew the files on the code-breaking activities would be worth millions to the Nazis and even more if he sold them back to the British. The same’s true with this Tube Alloys thing but apparently we’re the buyers for that one. The way it looks, the States is way ahead on this kind of research and we want to keep it to ourselves; we certainly don’t want Hitler getting his hands on it.’
‘So where is Danby?’ asked Jane.
‘He’s here, on Salen, but nobody knows where,’ said Fleming. ‘We found the landing strip a mile or so up the road; a field by the ruins of some place called Aros Castle. I’ve left my brother Peter there to question the locals.’
Dundee turned to Jane, smiling. ‘You were right about that matchbook cover you found in the old woman’s cottage. Chambers-Hunter probably used it as a reminder and then lost it.’
‘Chambers-Hunter?’ said Jane.
‘The one-armed Scotsman. He seems to have been the one leading that end of things. They weren’t like Charlie – the people are amateurs, zealots to boot. They make mistakes. I think Charlie was even counting on it.’
Jane took out her wallet and slipped the matchbook cover out of it. She stared down at it then pushed it into the middle of the table. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘one thing’s for sure – we’ve only got until midnight before Charles Danby disappears for good.’
Fleming reached out and picked up the small, grimy clue. He flipped it open, then paled. ‘That’s not midnight,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s noon.’ He dropped it back on the table. Dundee’s hand jerked forward and he picked it up, staring at it.
‘Christ! He’s right.’
Fleming checked his watch, a complicated-looking RAF Rolex with a mesh cage arching over the crystal like a fencing helmet. ‘That means we’ve only got an hour or so.’
Tommy came up out of the basement, a huge, empty metal ale barrel on his shoulder. He was whistling and panting simultaneously. He pushed out from behind the bar and dropped the barrel with a thump.
‘Bloody hell,’ he groaned, looking around casually to see if anyone was watching. He flexed his arms, the tiger leaping.
‘Now what do we do?’ said Jane. ‘Tommy checked for me. H. T. doesn’t mean high tide; the times are all wrong.’
Dundee kept staring down at the matchbook cover. He looked up and glanced at the overgrown boy struggling with the barrel, then back at the matchbook. ‘H. T.’ he muttered. He looked at young Connery again. ‘Tommy?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘When the coastal steamers come in to Salen where do they anchor?’
‘They don’t,’ the boy said promptly. ‘Too shallow, at least for the bigger ones.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders and sat down on top of the upended barrel to rest for a moment. ‘You’ll get the odd excursion boat but they’re wee.’
‘What about the ships from Scottish Trader Lines?’
‘Too big by half,’ said Tommy, shaking his head.
‘The ships berthed by the pier in Oban last night?’ asked Fleming, suddenly interested. Dundee nodded.
‘They don’t come here at all?’ said Dundee.
‘No, sir,’ said Connery. ‘There’s a great bloody drop off you see; at least according to my uncle, who used to be a fisherman. A cliff underwater, like. Goes from a hundred fathoms to ten, all in a blink. So the big ships anchor in the loch and any cargo gets brought in by truck.’
‘The loch?’ said Jane
Tommy nodded, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Aye. Loch na Keal. You just turn at the crossroads and go down the road for about two miles. Dead easy. It’s plenty deep enough for them to get in close and there’s the old landing place there.’ He grinned. ‘I go out to the old village on me bike to play sometimes, there’s no one about and…’ He stopped abruptly, suddenly realising he’d used the word ‘play,’ which certainly wasn’t in Shane’s vocabulary. He picked up the empty barrel and slung it over his shoulder, then marched out of the room, the scowl back on his face.
‘H. T.’ Dundee murmured. ‘Hebrides Trader. I saw her last night in Oban,’ he said quietly, looking at the matchbook cover. ‘He’s meeting the ship in the loch at noon.’
‘You were right,’ said Jane, remembering. ‘It was the safest way; put the Crown and the Sword on a coastal steamer from Bristol to an out-of-the-way spot up here.’
‘No, that’s not it,’ said Dundee obscurely. ‘But the ship will be there at noon, I’m sure of it.’
‘And Danby?’ asked Fleming ‘What about him?’
Jane glanced out the window beside her, staring out into the rain, suddenly understanding. ‘I can tell you that,’ she said flatly. ‘I saw him about an hour ago.’
* * *
The innkeeper’s battered and sea-salt-rusted old estate wagon hurtled down the narrow road that cut across the isthmus that separated the Sound of Mull from Loch na Keal. Beyond the forest that lay directly behind the village, the narrow neck of land was more like some of the moors that Jane had recently found herself on; the land was barren, a few shrubs and hedgerows here and there but not even enough grass for a few sheep to forage on.
‘You’re sure?’ said Fleming urgently from behind the wheel.
‘Who the hell else would be driving a Harley and wearing an MP’s uniform?’ asked Jane in the seat behind him. In the cargo space behind her an assortment of tools and old junk rattled and banged as the old car smashed into one pothole after another; obviously the road wasn’t used
very often. Fleming gave the wheel a sudden jerk to avoid a large boulder in the road and they slewed into the shallow ditch for a moment. He corrected, jamming the wheel around and gearing down and suddenly they were back on the road again. Beside him Dundee was checking to see if the magazine in the automatic Peter Fleming had given him was full. ‘I want him alive if possible,’ he said. ‘But dead if necessary. He can’t be allowed to get away with those secrets.’
Fleming said nothing, simply nodding and gripping the wheel tightly. On their right, barely a quarter of a mile away, the steep slopes of Craeg Moihr and Tom A’Chrochaire rose up out of the dead ground, bare of trees or brush or grass; cold, wet stone leaping straight up to the high pastures five hundred feet away. To their left loomed the gaunt cliffs of Ben More and above that the heavily forested slopes of the mountain itself, the trees combing great shreds of mist, most of the higher reaches of the great dark mound lost in the rain.
Ahead they could see where the road curved around a rise in the heath and wound its way up the farther cliffs that dropped right down into the sea. According to Tommy Connery’s uncle, the road serviced half a dozen tiny outposts on the way to the landing place for the boats to the Island of Iona, an ancient holy place that lay at the entrance to the loch. They weren’t about to try it; the road looked like no more than a goat track disappearing up into the mist.
In front of them, now, they could see where the road divided, one branch continuing up along the cliff edge, the other meandering off to the right between a row of sand dunes that shielded their view of the water. Fleming slowed then pulled over to the side of the road. He switched off the engine. Suddenly there was only silence.
‘Listen,’ said Dundee, straining to hear. Jane leaned forward in her seat. Faintly, in the middle distance, she could hear the sound of a foghorn. A few seconds later its moaning, ghostly response came eerily back from the enclosing cliffs.
‘It’s her,’ whispered Fleming. ‘The Hebrides Trader. She’s here.’
An American Spy Page 28