‘Hullo, Lamb,’ said Holmes.
‘I’ve been having a row,’ Lamb announced brightly, ‘with Scott Elliot.’
‘I know,’ said Holmes.
‘How do you know?’ exclaimed the astonished Lamb. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘No, he didn’t, but I know.’
‘The trouble with you,’ said Lamb, ‘is you know too much.’
They sat round the table. Morrison went briefly over the facts. Lamb added a few missing details. ‘The Foreign Office fell down on the North African job,’ Lamb said. ‘Made a balls of it. Lost a man on it. Got killed. Anyway he vanished. Never saw him again. Lost in a jellabi, or whatever they are.’ Everyone looked puzzled. Lamb did not stop for them to ask questions. ‘One of those things. Lawrence of Arabia. The Arabs wear them. Anyway, they lost a man. So they asked me for a good one. They got a good one. Shepherd was tough. Damned tough. And clever. He got what they wanted in a couple of months. But did they like him for it? No. He showed them up too much. Shepherd — ’ said Lamb ‘ — was a good boy, a very good boy. He didn’t have to wear jellabis.’
Morrison looked surprised. ‘Then you don’t think Shepherd might have betrayed secrets to the Russians?’
‘Oh, that!’ said Lamb. ‘I was talking about his mission. That was highly successful. But afterwards — ’ Lamb grimaced. ‘That wasn’t so good. Poor chap blotted his copybook. Usual story, I suppose, got tied up with this Russian woman. His wife doesn’t think so — ’
‘His wife!’ exclaimed Holmes. He stared at Lamb with horror. So did Morrison, who appeared to be momentarily speechless.
‘I’ve just come back from seeing her,’ said Lamb. Their expressions registered. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, aggrieved. ‘Do you mean you think I shouldn’t have gone to see her?’
‘Well — ’ began Morrison, still surprised, but not wishing to hurt Lamb’s feelings.
‘Nonsense,’ said Lamb. ‘I know the police would break the news. But that is pretty brutal. Knock on the door. Madam, I regret to tell you your husband has just been dragged out of the Thames. Not the sort of thing the department would like to happen to anyone, not the wife of a man like Shepherd.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Dammit,’ said Lamb. ‘I had to comfort the poor girl. She was completely knocked out by it. They have a small boy. About five. Tragedy, of course. They’ve just got a bungalow, near Bray. Pretty place. Pretty girl, too. But whether Shepherd was happy with her I don’t know.’ Lamb frowned and shook his head. ‘She was a foreigner.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ asked Holmes, sounding for the moment slightly irritated.
‘Eh?’ Lamb looked surprised. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know. She was young. He was away a lot. She was a dancer. In a nightclub. In Brussels. He met her there, married her, and brought her back. She’s been vetted, of course. Perfectly sound. Nothing against her.’
‘What exactly did you tell her?’ asked Morrison.
‘Not a very great deal,’ said Lamb. ‘I had to find out whether she knew anything about his job. She didn’t. So I had to tell her.’
‘Why?’
‘Dammit,’ said Lamb. ‘She had to be prepared. Dammit. I told her there would have to be an enquiry. I told her things looked pretty black but that she wasn’t to worry because the department was right behind her.’ Lamb was moved. ‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘Terribly sad.’
‘Yes,’ said Holmes. He hoped Lamb hadn’t done or said anything too awful. He was afraid he had. Holmes looked at Morrison and was aware that Morrison was feeling the same. ‘We had to tell her,’ said Lamb. He was aware of, but could not understand, their reservations. ‘I told her she ought to get her relatives over. I cabled her family for her. Got to rally round and do something. That’s common sense, isn’t it?’
Morrison changed the subject. ‘Shepherd didn’t get on very well with the Foreign Office, did he?’
‘Who does?’ said Lamb, gloomily.
‘Scott Elliot thought he might be a security risk.’
‘That fool,’ said Lamb. ‘There was no evidence at all of Shepherd being a security risk. Look at his personal file. The man had a brilliant record. Nothing wrong at all. Any woman,’ said Lamb bitterly, ‘can seduce a man if she makes up her mind to it.’
‘Meaning that’s what Nina Lydoevna did?’
‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’
Morrison consulted his notes. ‘Shepherd was thirty-five,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘His wife is — what?’
‘Thirtyish,’ said Lamb.
‘And Nina Lydoevna?’
‘Fortyish,’ Lamb shrugged. ‘Ages don’t matter much if it’s sexual blackmail. Maybe he went to a party and got drunk and — ’
‘Have you any evidence of this?’
‘No evidence,’ said Lamb. ‘I was thinking aloud.’
Why did Shepherd come home from Africa?’
‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ said Lamb. ‘I suspect he got fed up with the Foreign Office belly-aching and just threw in his hand and came home.’
‘Would he do that?’
‘He was difficult if you didn’t handle him properly; and of course those fools in the Foreign Office started sending out memos about his expenses. Imagine!’ Morrison sighed.
They were getting a very different picture of Shepherd now. It was to be expected. Lamb would back his own men.
‘About this chemical factory,’ said Morrison. ‘I’m not quite sure how important Shepherd’s mission was.’
‘Espionage these days,’ said Lamb, ‘is practically all chemicals.’ He resented it. ‘This isn’t my pigeon. This is Pendlebury’s.’
‘Eh?’ Pendlebury opened his eyes. ‘What is? Oh, the factory. Yes. Of course. You want to know about that.’
‘How important?’ asked Morrison, ‘was the information which Shepherd sent back?’
He knew it would be difficult to get an answer. He hardly expected to get one. Pendlebury would probably refer him to someone else. Morrison had got used to the working of the departments. But at least he could try. There was the advantage that Pendlebury was a scientist more than a civil servant. Even so, Morrison was surprised when Pendlebury said:
‘It was most important.’
They found themselves bending forward. In spite of the casual manner, the vagueness, the untidiness, Pendlebury was impressive. He took a long time to speak, choosing his words with care.
‘The Foreign Office sent Shepherd’s report to me first of all, asking for my comments. I didn’t know of course at the time that it came from Shepherd. I only know now that Lamb has told me. At the time I didn’t know where it had come from. The Foreign Office asked for an opinion. I sent the memo back to them saying that if the report was correct then it was of great importance, but that I doubted whether it was and would they check.’
‘Why did you doubt that?’
‘The size of the place, for one thing.’
‘It was very big?’
‘It was very big and it was producing fairly — shall we say? — rare compounds.’
‘Such as?’
‘Ergot derivatives of lysergic acid.’
‘Come again,’ said Morrison. ‘Put it in black and white.’
‘Rare drugs,’ said Pendlebury.
‘Used for what?’
‘That’s the point,’ said Pendlebury. He obviously found this difficult. ‘It all depends. In small quantities some of them are used for psycho-chemical research.’
‘What's psycho-chemical?'
‘Finding out how the human brain works.’
‘They'd better come and ask the police,’ said Morrison. ‘That's not why it's important, is it?'
‘No, but then there's a commercial use for some of these compounds. One in particular has had a lot of publicity. You've heard of LSD?
‘Ah,’ said Morrison. ‘So there'd be a black market for them?'
‘Indeed a black market,’ said Pendlebury. ‘At
the moment these compounds are only produced, so far as we know, in three countries — Switzerland, where they were first discovered, Russia, and America. The market is controlled; and not only for social reasons.’
‘What other reasons are there?'
‘Quite apart from its use as a drug, LSD might be used as a weapon in chemical warfare.’
‘Oh, might it?' said Morrison. ‘That’s interesting. I hadn't heard of that side of it. Has it got any other name apart from LSD?'
‘D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate.’
Morrison looked and Pendlebury grinned. ‘It is,’ Pendlebury admitted, ‘a bit of a mouthful.’
‘Would you mind writing it down for me?'.
‘Not at all.' Pendlebury wrote it down in a blank page of Morrison's notebook, handed it back, and Morrison looked at it suspiciously.
‘The most concentrated drug ever produced,’ said Pendlebury.
‘Concentrated?’
‘In its pure form a few microscopic grains on the point of a pin would be enough to dope you for hours.'
‘To dope — ?'
To give you hallucinations.’
That's not the stuff on the market?’
‘No, I’m talking about the factory product.'
‘And in chemical warfare?'
‘It's on the list of what we call population weapons.'
‘How do you mean?’
‘There are a number of drugs that could be used but LSD is so much stronger that it is not really comparable. It has quite unique properties. It is, for example, so strong that only a pound or so in London's water supply would affect about eight million people.'
‘A pound or so?'
‘Properly distributed that would give faint hallucinations to about eight million people. I merely mention that to show you that there is no real need to produce very much of it. According to Shepherd's report he said this factory was producing LSD in large quantities. It all depends on what you mean by large. That is why I said the report should be checked.'
‘Large quantities,' repeated Morrison. He made a note. ‘You were thinking about chemical warfare?’
‘Lots of people are — it's the new vogue.'
‘Oh-is it?'
‘Safer than bacteriological — fewer after-effects and can’t get out of control. The Americans call it a caponiser weapon and the Russians prekratitel voiny — a war-stopper weapon. So it is, in theory.’
‘In theory?’
‘No one has tested it in practice.'
‘How would it be distributed?'
‘You would infiltrate agents into enemy territory and dope the reservoirs. You could then, during the following twelve hours, occupy their main cities without resistance. In theory, of course, if you continued to dope the reservoirs, you would never have any resistance.’
Morrison struggled with his growing disbelief.
‘It would be dropped in reservoirs?'
That’s right — and would contaminate the water supply.’
‘So everybody would be doped?’
‘That is the theory.'
‘And would get hallucinations?’
The same effect as taking drugs.’
‘And this could be done to all the London reservoirs?’
‘In theory, there’s nothing to stop it being done. LSD is odourless and tasteless and it dissolves in water.’
‘Put an entire city into a trance,’ said Morrison. The idea fascinated him. ‘Well. What would an entranced population do?’
‘Sit about. Look at things. Not take any interest in what was happening around them.’
‘Couldn’t be roused to danger?’
‘Not at all.’
Morrison said: ‘This is serious, is it? This sort of thing is possible?’
‘Perfectly possible,’ said Pendlebury. ‘Indeed there are many people as well as strategists who consider it preferable to conventional war.’
‘Does it have any after-effects?’
‘An ordinary dose doesn’t.’
‘You’re doped for twelve hours and then come round?’
‘From, shall we say, three to twelve hours, depending on the amount.’
‘No ill effects?’
‘None, providing it was done properly.’
‘It immobilizes a city while the paratroops take over.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then they all wake up?’
‘Unless they are unfortunate enough to have had an overdose.’
‘What happens then?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Pendlebury. ‘So far no one has had an overdose, at least not to our knowledge. But we suspect they would probably suffer damage to some of the brain cells and go mad.’
‘Well, well,’ said Morrison. It all sounded unbelievable to him but by now he had come to recognize that many things would always be unbelievable to his rather pragmatic intelligence. He had to take Pendlebury seriously. Pendlebury was a boffin. A chief boffin. Otherwise Morrison would have treated the story differently: with disrespect. ‘Right,’ said Morrison. ‘The factory in Libya is producing this stuff. I take it there’s no doubt about it?’
‘None,’ said Lamb. ‘If Shepherd said they’re producing it, they’re producing it.’
‘Where’s it going?’ said Morrison; and there was silence. Pendlebury shrugged his shoulders and seemed to go into some trance of his own. Lamb looked glum and shook his head.
‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Pendlebury, at length. ‘Ever since I read the Foreign Office memo. It’s disturbing. What I mean is — it’s all right trying to tell laymen what this thing is like but it doesn’t really carry conviction and it doesn’t really register. It’s like trying to describe the effects of a fifty-megaton explosion. You wouldn’t really understand unless you saw it. It’s the same with these new compounds, these hallucinogens. People tell you it would dope the population of an entire city and that it’s a harmless drug. So it is, in one way. Even so, imagine the trains and buses crashing into each other as the drivers passed out. Thousands would be killed. Then, if there was an overdose — ’ Pendlebury shook his head. ‘It’s not science-fiction,’ he said. ‘It could be a city of raving idiots. That’s what I mean — it’s difficult to convey the possibilities and dangers.’
‘And they’re making this in Africa?’ said Morrison. The words hung in the air.
CHAPTER THREE
Uplands
Nothing seemed to happen for about a week. Morrison disappeared. Inspector Post was nowhere to be seen. The others remained at their desks and waited to see what would mature; and when nothing did and day passed day without any apparent development or any word from Morrison, they followed their own preoccupations with their own particular aspects of the case. Holmes was anxious; he was anxious not only about the Shepherd affair for its own sake but about the effect it was having on the relationship between the Foreign Office and Lamb; a small but bitter departmental war was now raging, an avalanche of complaints building up in the Cabinet Office.
Frensham, the secretary to the Cabinet, who was an amiable man and disliked rows, tackled Holmes in the corridor one morning with an alarmed: ‘My dear Holmes, can’t you do anything to stop them?’
Holmes, who had been thinking for some time how to do that, murmured it was very difficult, grimaced, smiled, hurried on, waved, and said he would see Frensham later. He had no intention of seeing Frensham later. It was the only way he could escape. The trouble, as Holmes knew, was that in their own ways Scott Elliot and Lamb were both right, on the minor points of departmental responsibility which had started the row; but by now the dispute had widened so considerably and its frontiers had been so extended that no one quite remembered how it had started or what the original argument had been about. It was a nagging accompaniment to the main intractable problem.
What sort of man was Shepherd: had he betrayed Foreign Office secrets, as Scott Elliot believed, or had his meeting with the Russian some other purpose? Holmes waited
impatiently for Morrison to report. But Morrison was not a man to be hurried. He would take his time.
Meanwhile Holmes made discreet enquiries, not about Shepherd nor his mission, but about Africa. He went through the Foreign Office intelligence reports: the blue-flimsy file on Africa became his bedside reading; he turned up unexpectedly at diplomatic receptions, seeking the men who could give him information, he haunted embassies with strange emblems, over whose doors, in Kensington and Notting Hill, hung little-known flags. Some of the men he talked to were flattered by his interest, others were suspicious, one or two hostile. One morning, as he was about to arrange lunch with a gentleman from the Sudan, came a message that Morrison would like to see him. Holmes discarded the idea of the lunch. He invited Morrison over.
Morrison settled in the familiar armchair and had a grateful sip of the best malt before unburdening himself. They had made some progress in tracing Shepherd’s movements.
Shepherd had flown back to London from Cairo but had not had his interview with Scott Elliot until the following day. That evening he had gone home, had spent the night at home with his wife and son, and had left the next morning for London where he had gone into hospital. He had discharged himself within twenty-four hours. ‘The excuse was that he didn’t like the place,’ said Morrison. ‘They say he was very difficult. He had a row with the doctor.’
Shepherd had gone home, had been at home a day, and the following day had seen a man in Harley Street, a homoeopathic consultant, who had told Morrison that Shepherd seemed to have been in ‘a high state of nerves’ and ‘very excited’.
Morrison consulted his notebook, which he had placed open on the arm of the chair. The consultant was one of a group of four in a practice which utilized the services of a private nursing home in Belgravia and a nature-cure establishment in Surrey. Morrison was not clear whether the consultant brought up the subject of nature cure or Shepherd, but whoever had done so, they had rung up the matron of the nature-cure establishment from the consulting-rooms and Shepherd had gone down there that afternoon.
‘He seems,’ said Morrison, ‘to have taken elaborate precautions either to establish an alibi or cover his tracks.’
The Shepherd File Page 3