Rollerball (Commander Shaw Book 17)

by Philip McCutchan

  There was a grin. “Mahomet Ali.”

  I nodded, and grinned back. “I thought as much. But you do know who he is, I take it. You won’t lose anything by answering a few questions about him. Or about the other two thugs.”

  “I’ve nothing to say.”

  I shrugged. For now, he wasn’t softened up and I believed he would keep his mouth shut, but a time would come. It always does — almost always. It comes faster if you can get hold of someone else, a mate like the other two gunmen, or the Pakistani himself, and then play one off against the other. Assuming I was still a magnet, that might happen. I decided to leave him for now and let the stewing process continue. I would be in a better position once the contents of the brief-case had been translated.

  I got to my feet, pushing the chair back. “You’ll remain in custody,” I said. “We have an understanding with the Met. They’ll be along to take you over. Then it’ll be official, which will please you.”

  I left the interrogation room and went back up to The Suite, not to Max’s room but to that of Mrs Dodge, who gave me a cup of coffee. I’d just lit a cigarette when Max buzzed. I was told to go through. Felicity was still there with Max, so was the interpreter, a staff member named Higgins, an expert on the Orient and its languages. There was a smile lurking round Felicity’s mouth but Max looked grim and accusing. He jabbed a finger towards the neat pile of Japanese documents on his desk.

  “Blasted bumph,” he said. “All of it!”

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  “Japanese pornography. A thousand and one ways of doing it. Plus some handouts on a Japanese method of do-it-yourself artificial insemination.”

  I blew out my cheeks. “Is that really all?”

  “According to Higgins, yes. So far he’s had time only to give it a brief run through but I take his word and you’ll have to as well.”

  I said, “It can’t be all! That Jap … he hung onto it like grim death. Under his bottom all the way in the boat across from the Barrier Reef.” I paused, running a hand through my hair in some desperation; I’d been banking on that brief-case, looking upon it as the answer to everything. Max said it was obviously just the cash. I turned to Higgins. “I’d be grateful for a full transcription,” I said.

  Higgins said that of course I could have it. Max cut in. “What’s the point, Shaw? Higgins knows his job.”

  “There may be no point,” I said doggedly, “but I’d like to see the whole work-out just the same. Higgins knows his Japanese all right, but he wasn’t out there in Australia. There just might be something tucked away that will tie in.”

  “With your sex life in Sydney?”

  That angered me. I said, “That was uncalled for.”

  Max gave a small, tight grin. “All right, all right. Have your wish. Learn what you can.” He was in a bad mood and had to go on, had to take it out on someone. “It’s all very explicit and graphic, even in the absence of illustrations.” He shoved the papers across to Higgins. “Pander to the field, my dear chap. Do as he asks and don’t get too excited while you’re doing it.” Then he turned to me. “Don’t take too long mulling it over.” Felicity and I left the room together, followed by Higgins who promised to give the transcription first priority. I said I would wait in Focal House for it. I went along to the office that was known as mine but which I didn’t often see, and Felicity and I composed our formal, written report that would have as a matter of routine to go on file. When it was ready, and it took some time because 6D2 always insists on full detail, I dictated it to a secretary sent up by the confidential pool, read it through when she had typed it, and then signed it. After that we went along to the staff dining-room, where there was a bar. I was on my second whisky and feeling more relaxed when Higgins called down on the internal phone. He was ready. I went along and got the translation together with the Japanese original, or rather a Xerox of it, and suggested to Felicity that we take it to my flat to give it a thorough going through. I wanted to be handy for bed; not because of the erotic nature of the literature but because we were both dead tired and if things got busy we were going to be even more so. Even agents have to sleep.

  Felicity agreed wholeheartedly. She was looking white and exhausted. When she asked about Max I replied with a rude comment. If there was anything urgent, he knew where to find me. I left the brief-case behind and pushed the papers into an inside pocket. Fingerprint section would be busy on the originals and something might come from that angle though I saw that as a very long shot.

  When I took my own car out from the parking lot where I’d got into the habit of leaving it when away, I saw the Pakistani again, lurking behind a newspaper in a car at a meter. I was pretty sure it was him and when I saw in my driving mirror that he was on the move I was certain. Somehow or other he must have got hold of my registration number and possibly a description of my car as well.

  But he wasn’t as hot as he might have been: I shook him off about a couple of miles farther on.

  6.

  “Quite a thrill,” I said.

  “Excited?”

  “Naturally. A little experimentation … ?”

  “Not all of it,” Felicity said.

  It was really juicy. The Japanese, I thought, must be great lovers, with plenty of imagination. But I could find nothing of any interest as regards the job in hand, nothing about the kind of balls that were occupying my official mind. Balls as heavy as lead … one of those filthy naval songs. I hummed it, absently. The metal certainly wouldn’t be lead whatever else it might be. I sat back and pondered, feeling more tired than ever, nearly dropping off where I sat in front of an electric fire. I drank whisky; it might bring inspiration. I’d watched a TV programme a year or so ago, about health. It emerged that those who drank whisky daily lived longer. Word of a Dutch doctor … I’d been pleased to be told that; but now it was sleepifying and didn’t lead to inspiration. I finished the glass and forbore to pour another. Active duty might call.

  I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair. Felicity was sitting on the other arm. I looked up at her and said, “Hell’s bells, let’s leave it.”

  She didn’t answer. She frowned and said, “There must be something in it. Five thousand’s not a fortune, is it? As you said to Max, that Jap — ”

  “Yes. But if there is … well, it’s gone now. Perhaps the little so-and-so stowed the real information somewhere else.”

  “You checked the bodies,” she said. And I had; but I hadn’t checked everything. I had by no means wanted to and I hadn’t seen the necessity then. My going over had been swift and routine; I’d been so convinced the gen was in the brief-case. I could have checked farther and perhaps — in retrospect — should have. People have many places of concealment in their bodies, as any customs officer could confirm. But there it was; too late now, and if Sergeant Dix or the Rockhampton forensic people had done the necessary Focal House would have been informed by now of anything that might be interesting. As for the briefcase itself, I’d not neglected the possibility of a secret compartment and I’d left word before leaving Focal House to have that investigated. Nothing had come through since.

  Felicity said, “There could be a concealed message. A sort of code.”

  I shook my head. “Forget it. It wouldn’t work in translation. Anyway, what would be the point — from their angle?”

  She shrugged. “Just a thought.”

  I said, “It’s bloody funny, if there’s nothing in it, that our Pakistani seemed so anxious to get hold of it. If that was his objective. It may not have been. Maybe he was just going to bump us off.”

  “Not an awful lot of point. It must have been the brief-case.”

  “Yes." I said, “I think so too.” I even thought about invisible ink, but that was simply a giggle. I racked my brains. They didn't respond. I was too whacked; the only thing to do was to leave it and try again next day. But I didn't get much sleep, for just as I'd made the decision to stop thinking the security line went. It was Max, still in F
ocal House. “Higgins,'’ he said. “He's been digging. He has that sort of mind — crossword puzzles, anagrams, even Rubik’s Cube. Get round here.”

  He rang off. I looked at Felicity and said, “You could have struck the nail on the head when you suggested a code.”

  *

  Higgins was looking pleased with himself and I didn’t blame him. Together with the cypher section he’d done some very patient, painstaking work and he’d certainly dug something out. It had come from the Japanese characters. He tried to explain, but I wasn’t with him at all, not having his mind. I’ve never solved Rubik’s confounded Cube yet, for instance. He told me about how certain characters had come together in a kind of sequence in his mind, something of that sort, and how he’d managed after much cogitation to put them in series and work out sense from it all. He’d made a translation of his efforts and I went through it with him in Max’s presence and up to a point it looked like the real stuff. I say up to a point because there was a hell of a lot of slogging yet to be done. What Higgins produced first was a list of names linked with countries or towns, but the names didn’t strike any of us as being much immediate help since they were clearly code names only. For instance: Todofuken, which Higgins said meant a prefecture or Japanese local government division, was linked with Australia; Akihito — a Japanese prince — with Britain. Obviously the boss man, I thought. There was another in Inverness, another in Birmingham, another in York. London wasn’t specified as such but I reckoned that would be the habitat of this Akihito. Then Higgins came up with a plain list of towns that made interesting reading: I had no need of a road atlas to tell me that they were all either on or adjacent to the main trunk routes of the A9 and the Al.

  Max asked, “Well? What do you make of it?”

  “London,” I said. “And points north up to Inverness. You said the balls had been found mainly in the north.”

  “Right.”

  “There appears to be a connexion,” I said, “taking everything into account. But I’m still stymied.”

  Max glanced across at Higgins. “Go on,” he said.

  Higgins looked down at his notes. “There’s a date,” he told me. “February 24th.”

  “February 24th. Three weeks ahead.”

  “Yes. It’s a Friday.”

  “Big help,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the lot.”

  I gave a sigh of frustration. Really there was nothing to go on, except one fact — that it was the Japanese we were up against, the Japanese we had to find — and one hypothesis: that on February 24th something originating in Inverness was going to hit London. Unless, presumably, the government coughed up an impossible amount of cash. When I put this fairly obvious hypothesis to Max he just grunted and said I was probably right and had better get busy finding out more. He made the suggestion that the Japanese intended to spread the tetradoxin, as had been suggested to me before, via the country’s reservoirs. By dropping the heavy balls, he said, but I didn’t see it. If Railton’s endeavours had failed to crack the ball I’d taken to him … but as against that was the fact that in Sydney tetradoxin had undoubtedly leaked through. But under extreme pressure, such as wasn’t likely to be exerted by the water of a reservoir. Neither was there going to be heat. In any case I didn’t see the point; there were much easier ways of introducing poison into the water supply. It was only later that I cottoned on to the psychological effect of a slow and inexorable build-up of nationwide tension. But by that time I’d had reason to discard the reservoir theory.

  I went back to the flat, once again racking what was left of my brains. I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. When I got back Felicity had fallen asleep in front of the fire and she didn’t wake when I lifted her gently and tucked her up in bed in her underwear.

  *

  Next morning early, another call was received at Number 10 Downing Street, and was again taken by an aide. This time, the PM was not asked for. The voice was established positively as Japanese and the monitoring equipment identified the call as originating in Australia. Sydney, to be precise. The caller was kept talking and the co-operation of the Sydney authorities was requested urgently from the highest source. They responded very promptly and carried out a raid in the Wooloomooloo area of the city but were too late. The address, by the time they got there, was unoccupied and the telephone had been ripped out. So that was that. The call had done little more than reiterate the previous one but was more insistent. If the British Government failed to meet the terms, they would face internal trouble. I recalled the words of one of the Jap brothers back aboard the coaster: "Great British public will ensure in time.” They were still not being precise — all part of the build-up — but it sounded very nasty and during the morning the Establishment started to get rattled. There was a cabinet meeting, an out-of-routine one, hastily summoned, attended by the brass from the Defence Ministry' and some top civil servants, and by Max, together with the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Max told me about it afterwards. The PM, he said, was determined to concede nothing and so was most of the cabinet, but some had shown a touch of cold feet since there was a general election in the offing and the government couldn’t afford to be seen to let anything nasty happen. Money, some had said, wasn’t everything and though the national economy was sick it wasn’t that bad.

  Max was scathing about what he called the New Wets; but he was in a sour mood because he’d been given a bad time by the PM, who’d expected some sort of result already. That was grossly unfair and unrealistic and apparently he’d said so but had been shouted at. He asked what I intended to do about it; his reputation, I gathered, hung largely on my efforts.

  I countered that by asking, "What about Scotland Yard?”

  Max snapped, “In the first instance, the Establishment’s not to be seen to be reacting. The public’s to be lulled and the press will be muzzled from now on. That means the Yard’ll wait to see what we turn up.” He pointed a thick finger at me. "That means you. Find something, and you’ll have all the undercover backing that’s needed. I’m sure you understand.”

  I understood only too well. General elections are highly important things. No doubt the Japs understood that as well as I did, hence the timing. And while I was doing the spadework, discretion was going to be all. Until, of course, the Japs blew it themselves. Max had that very much in mind. He said, "You can forget the press muzzle in any effective sense. When these buggers are ready, they’ll spread the word easily enough — even if it’s only on CB.”

  I went to have another word with chummy from the attempted hijack, just on the off-chance. He was being accommodated in Cannon Row police station and was making demands to be freed or charged. I gathered he’d been making them non-stop since arrival. I told him a lie; I said we’d nabbed the Pakistani and it wouldn’t be long before he started talking to save his skin. In fact, I said, he’d started already.

  “What about?” he asked jeeringly; he didn’t believe it for one moment.

  I told him a yarn and he just laughed at me. I pressed a little more for form’s sake but got nowhere and then I left him and rang Scotland Yard, speaking to the Assistant Commissioner Crime. I asked him to expedite chummy’s departure from custody. He said the man couldn’t be released considering he’d been nabbed in the act and a charge was about to be made.

  “All right,” I said. “Charge him — it’ll look more natural and convincing. Then let him go.”

  “ Bail, d’you mean?”

  “Either that or connive at his escape from custody.”

  The ACC clicked his tongue. “He’ll have to go before a magistrate to get bail, and we could scarcely agree — ”

  “All right,” I interrupted. “The other thing, then. He’s going to be more use to national security on the loose where I can tail him.”

  The ACC didn’t like it but I was insistent and he knew I would have Max’s backing, which meant in effect the seal of Prime Ministerial approval. So he agreed. Later t
hat day chummy was charged formally and he was charged in the name of Henry Kissinger, which was the only name he would give. His prints hadn’t revealed anything; so far as the police computer went, he was clean. And no identification had been found amongst the contents of his pockets. When the charge was made, the ACC telephoned me at Focal House and said Henry Kissinger would be moved to Wandsworth at 9.30 that evening in a prison vehicle. As the van came down Millbank towards Vauxhall Bridge an unmarked car driven by a plainclothes man would come fast out of Ponsonby Place on a left-hand turn and would veer across the road to pass in front of the prison van, which would slam its brakes on. The prison officers in the back would jump out, and Henry Kissinger would have his chance if he cared to take it. I believed he would. The ACC said that if anyone was hurt then 6D2 would have to pay compensation and I would have to wrestle with my conscience as best I could. But I knew the capacities of police drivers; short of some filthy luck, it would go off according to plan and without injury.

  By 9.15 I was waiting at the Millbank end of Ponsonby Place by the RAMC college and Felicity was lurking about where Ponsonby Terrace joins Millbank, hand-in-hand with another field man, Jim Parsons. Both Felicity and I were dressed near enough as winter hippies in jeans and duffel coats and looking as unkempt as the make-up experts in Focal House could manage. Felicity’s fair hair looked ragged and unwashed where it wasn’t covered with a man’s cloth cap, and I had a haggard look that wasn’t entirely assumed plus an utterly out-of-character moustache and sideboards that wouldn’t shift easily to the touch. It was a dirty night, wet and very cold and the traffic was thin, as were the pedestrians. The prison officers were going to have their work cut out not to see Henry Kissinger making his dash but it was vital the thing should look genuine.