by John Creasey
‘Any idea what happened?’
‘None at all’ said Miller. ‘How did you get on the scene?’
‘I know Bob had come to see – to see Criff.’
‘Hmm. Looks as though there was a shindy up there all right, and Criff’s johnnies made it,’ Miller said thoughtfully. ‘I – well I’m damned!’
He saw the persistent cub of a reporter tapping the doctor’s shoulder, and he deserted Lois quickly. The girl watched him, as the cub turned tail and slipped away.
‘Jackals, Webb called ’em, and he wasn’t far wrong,’ growled Miller. ‘Well, there’s not much we can do. Does Craigie know?’
‘Yes, I’ve just phoned him.’
‘Good girl,’ said Miller, his voice approving, yet slightly patronising. He had found it hard to believe that Gordon Craigie was trusting a girl to work for him – Lois Dacre was the first woman agent of Department Z. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lois bitterly. ‘I wish to goodness I could discover someone – something. It’s just standing here that does the damage, and – well!’
She broke off, glanced down at Bob Kerr, then nodded to Miller.
‘Tell Craigie I’ve gone after the woman in the case, will you?’ she said, and with another sharp, unamused smile, she slipped through the crowd. Miller pushed his hat to the back of his head. She was a cool ‘un, a proper partner for Kerr. But –
The medico, brusque, alert, plump and short-tempered, glared at him.
‘This man’ – he pointed to Kerr – ‘should be all right in a day or two. The others are touch and go. The ambulances should be along soon. They’ve to go to Marion’s Hospital.’
Miller nodded, thanked him, and set out to find Webb. The fire, which had threatened to be really dangerous, was now under control. Already the flames had stopped coming out of the window, and the smoke cloud was lessening.
After a struggle Miller managed to reach Captain Webb’s elbow. He turned promptly.
‘Petrol. Not a shred of doubt about it. My goodness, Miller, you’ve got something on your hands here!’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Miller heavily. He moved into the building and came face to face with a tall, thin, hatchet-faced man wearing a dark grey suit and a somewhat battered hat. It was Gordon Craigie, head of Department Z.
‘Hallo, Craigie.’
‘Eh? Oh, hallo, Miller. Bad business.’
‘Heard about the others?’
‘Tell me.’
Miller told what he could, and Craigie listened, a slight frown wrinkling his forehead.
‘Hmm. Well, I suppose we have to expect it. Criff was shot dead, you say?’
‘Looks as though Kerr or one of the others got him.’
Craigie’s eyes twinkled. He had so trained himself to show nothing of his thoughts, depressing or otherwise, that he seemed always to be in exactly the same frame of mind – a good-tempered and patient one.
‘Does it? I can’t imagine those three and Criff together ending that way.’
‘Well, you know them best. By the way, I’ve just seen Miss Dacre. She says she’s after a woman.’
‘A woman, eh? Hm. That’ll be Lady Mondell – but of course you haven’t heard about it yet. Come round in’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘three hours, will you? You might ask the Commissioner if he can spare me half-an-hour at the same time.’
Miller promised that he would, and Craigie walked along to the scene of the fire. But Webb assured him there wasn’t a chance of finding anything in the flat, apart from the traces of arson – and there was not the slightest doubt about that.
Craigie nodded soberly.
‘Thanks – it’s what I wanted to know.’
He left the captain, to find the crowd thinning outside, three people leaving the scene for every one who came towards it. Craigie smiled sardonically. The old, old curiosity, and the old ignorance. If he were to tell them that the men concerned risked their lives as secret service agents, they would assume at once that they were acting for a film company.
Did it matter?
Craigie did not think so. He called a cab ordering the driver to go to Marion’s Hospital. Kerr had been to see him, only an hour and a half back.
The chief agent had reported the affair at Edge House, had explained his conclusions, and had been grim-voiced and gloomy despite the fact that Flash Jo had talked of Grattle Street.
It had taken Craigie five minutes to prove that the telephone number which Flash Jo and others called from 18, Grattle Street was Adam Criff’s. Kerr had more than guessed it.
‘But supposing Criff doesn’t know much, and there’s someone else? Do we leave him?’ he had asked Craigie.
Craigie had shaken his head.
‘Can’t afford it with a man like Criff, Bob. See what you can force out of him, and then bring him here. Better take Wally, and perhaps Bob Carruthers with you. Need anyone else?’
‘That should be enough.’
Craigie had decided that it would be. Now he knew he had made a mistake. And that was the trouble, of course. He was always making mistakes, he had to make them. He wished to God he was infallible, that Kerr was, and the others.
That particular trio were strong enough to take care of any normal show. Whatever had happened had been very much out of the ordinary.
Had Criff talked? Craigie ached to know.
And there was another thing: Lois Dacre. He wished she had not gone off on her own, though had it been one of the men he would not have thought twice about it. Odd how he could not get into the habit of relying on Lois, although she had shown resource equal if not superior to any of the men.
‘Here you are, sir.’
Craigie jumped out, paid the cabby, and went into the hospital. He knew the house-surgeon, and there would be no need to show an identity card.
The surgeon, Sir Wilfrid Mayer, tall, bluff, keen-eyed, greeted him amiably.
‘Hallo, Craigie. After those fire victims, eh?’
‘And in a hurry, Mayer,’ said Craigie.
‘As usual, eh? Well, I wish I could say for sure about the two big fellows. Nasty throat wounds. The other fellow will pull round. Conscious ten minutes ago, and demanding to see you. I’ll take you up.’
Kerr was in a private ward. He was heavily bandaged, his right foot making a formidable mound under the bedclothes, but he was obviously desperately anxious to talk.
He greeted Craigie with feverish relief.
‘Thank God you’ve come, I thought the idiots would never fetch you. Listen, Gordon – Criff was shot through a window. That man Kryn chucked a grenade, and set fire to the place – yes, I saw him with my own eyes. Kryn’s our man for the time being. I don’t know how Wally and Carry were put out, but the servant was missing, so it looks as if it was his doing.’
Craigie leaned forward.
‘Did Criff talk?’
Kerr grimaced.
‘As much as he could. He didn’t know a great deal, although he must have known enough to make the others want to kill him.’
Craigie pulled nervously at his lower lip.
‘So there are others, eh?’
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Everything pointed a damned sight too easily to Criff.’
‘Too easily?’
‘It looks to me – hindsight of course – as though the swabs wanted him to catch a packet.’ Kerr wiped his forehead. ‘Listen, old man, Criff was always in the limelight. It worried me. A man really behind the scenes wouldn’t show himself as much as Criff did. It’s obvious now that he was told to. Criff held the limelight while the others collected the cash.’
‘And who are the others?’ asked Craigie.
Kerr was silent for a moment, his shallow breathing coming too quickly. He had put a great deal into this effort. Too much. He cursed his own weakness, but managed to gather enough strength to say slowly:
‘I don’t know. Criff always meets them in Vallena. He named Prell, the Vallenia
n Foreign Secretary as one of them, and said he didn’t know the names of the others. When he saw them they were always disguised.’
‘Sigmund Prell, eh?’
‘That’s the fellow. Well – these orders for putting the wrong goods in English shipments. A simple explanation, Craigie. So simple we didn’t think of it.’
Kerr heaved himself up on one elbow.
‘And damnably cunning. By doing it, they made English firms take their business elsewhere. At the moment we are buying practically nothing from Vallena. That gives the Vallenian Government every reason for putting a hell of a high tariff on our goods – and for breaking off economic relationship. And Craigie: practically all our stuff for south Russia, northern Rumania and southern Poland is shipped via Vallena. Supposing Vallena, annoyed because we don’t buy from them, put up exorbitant rates? We’ve got to pay, or send goods via longer and more expensive routes. It’s an almighty stab at our mid-European trade. And that –’ Kerr managed a smile – ‘is about as far as I can think. My head’s aching like the very devil, damn it.’
Craigie stood up abruptly. It was the first time he had ever heard Bob Kerr breathe a word of complaint. If he was not careful he would put Kerr back for days, and he was going to need him badly.
‘Sorry, old man. You’ve worked it out pretty tightly, and I’ll follow up. The whole crowd is either scotched or has cleared out of England, that’s pretty certain, so you’re all right for a few days.’
Kerr nodded, but Craigie knew he had not really heard his words.
* * *
The Chief of Department Z left the hospital, after learning that there was no change in the serious condition of his other two agents. He knew that Kryn was still in England, but he had tried to ease Kerr’s mind.
So it looked like an effort to block British goods from reaching some of the mid-European countries. That was something to work on, anyhow. It would go deeper, of course. The amount of trade was not tremendous. Big, of course, and serious if the British manufacturers lost it.
Craigie reached the steps of the hospital, and heard the usual roar of traffic, the usual hum of conversation and the bellowing of frenzied-voiced newspaper sellers.
Craigie bought a paper and opened it out. He frowned when he read under a headline that the beautiful Princess Katrina of Vallena was planning a solo-flight to Africa.
Then he stood dead still, quite unaware of the jostling crowd around him. He hardly noticed them: he saw only the stop-press message.
Sigmund Prell Vallenian Foreign
Secretary reported assassinated
by unidentified Russian agent –
A.1. News Exchange.
Prell! The only man Criff had been able to identify.
Chapter 9
Old Friends
It was one of the rare occasions when Gordon Craigie was shaken out of his acquired calm. With waving arms he called peremptorily for a taxi, and jumped in.
So Prell had been murdered.
Craigie knew that it was another step, and a longer one, than the others. It suggested that things were moving to a head, for no one would arrange the assassination of a prominent diplomat unless there was an urgent reason for it.
The ruthlessness of it appalled him.
He was also at a loss. Whereas before they had known something of Criff and had slowly discovered others, now they were absolutely in the dark. Unless one of the men apprehended at Grattle Street could give information, the three slim chances lay in finding:
(a)The tall man named Kryn, sometimes known as Jacobs.
(b)Von Hauf, a German Jew.
(c)Shirin, a White Russian.
Until that morning Kryn had been at the Riltaz Hotel. Craigie was wondering why the agents following him had not stopped him from doing damage at Devennet Court. Obviously he had given his watchers the slip, visited Criff, discovered Kerr there (perhaps he had already learned of the coup at Grattle Street) and acted accordingly. The disappearance of Jones, the butler-valet, suggested that Criff himself had been served by a man spying for that high command which had always worried Criff, and was now beginning to worry Craigie.
Kerr’s rough sketch of the possibilities was precious near the truth, Craigie thought.
Criff had always been too much in evidence. Had he been directing things himself he would have been far more circumspect. It was true that Craigie had wondered at times why the man had been so much in the limelight but he had decided that it was a form of vanity bolstered up by confidence in his immunity from trouble. Craigie was now telling himself he had made another mistake.
Mistake – mistakes! His head whirled with them, his heart was sick because of them. And here he was, with three of his best agents hors de combat, with young Falling dead, with the people he did know of on the opposite side dead or missing, and an unpleasant feeling that the big trouble which he had feared, was looming near.
But supposing Vallena, because of the refusal of English merchants to buy Vallenian goods, did put up a vicious tariff? Supposing they did push up freight charges, making the market extremely difficult for England: who would benefit?
Craigie began to feel a little more satisfied.
The reason why the blockade of British goods was wanted, always assuming Kerr had been right, was that someone else would get the trade. That someone would benefit considerably. Say a twentieth of British trade was lost: a small proportion looked at like that, but some tens – no, hundreds – of millions a year. Now the plot was taking on the shape of an international trade racket.
The cab jerked to avoid another coming behind it, and Craigie glanced into the interior of the cab. He saw a shortish, pug-faced man who was glaring ahead of him. Craigie did not recognise him, though Captain Webb and Superintendent Miller would certainly have done so.
Nevertheless it occurred to Craigie then that he was being damned careless. For many years he had managed his work in such secrecy that very few people had associated him with the Intelligence. But now he was better known, and as likely a victim of a bullet as Kerr or any of the others. Craigie’s lips drooped in the somewhat mournful smile that characterised him. He often wondered whether he was as important and as effective as he believed. While he was working it seemed impossible that anyone else could replace him. Supposing someone did shoot him, here and now, what substantial difference would it make to – for instance – the Vallenian affair?
None, thought Gordon Craigie.
It might hold up the game for a while, and the other side would progress a little faster, but someone – the Chief Commissioner, Kerr, one of a dozen permanent officials from the Foreign Office – would take over. And on it would go as smoothly and effectively as before.
An hour and a half had passed since he had left Miller, and it was now two o’clock. Time to eat, thought Craigie with some surprise, and before long Miller and Fellowes would be coming to see him.
‘Scotland Yard, sir.’ The cabby pushed back the sliding glass partition.
‘Make it the Foreign Office,’ Craigie said.
‘Right you are, sir.’
Craigie was deposited at the Foreign Office. A few yards ahead of him a taxi slowed down, just long enough for the pug-faced man believed by some to be a newspaper reporter, to look out of the rear window of the cab.
As he did so, Pug Face fingered an automatic in his pocket.
There was Craigie, the mainspring of British Intelligence, walking briskly along the pavement towards a small door leading to the Foreign Office. There was a man who worked for Mr Kryn, sitting in a perfect position for shooting Craigie in the back. Craigie was within a fraction of a second of death as he walked unknowingly onwards.
Pug Face glanced at the traffic about him. His driver was a good man, and would get away if anyone could. But there still remained a damnable risk of being caught.
Had he been Tino Platt or Fencer, Craigie would have been dead in that moment. As it was Pug Face hesitated long enough for Craigie’s right foot to disappe
ar into the doorway. Then the man raised his gun – and Craigie disappeared altogether.
‘Too late, damn it!’ muttered Pug Face to himself.
He felt relieved, not because he had avoided killing a man, but because he had avoided the possibility of being caught. Craigie had been too quick for him, a lucky thing for Craigie and perhaps himself.
Pug Face tapped on the glass partition.
‘Strand Hotel, driver.’
‘Right, sir.’ Driver and Pug Face had worked together in their mysterious ways for a long time, but in all things they appeared to be strangers. The cab moved from the kerb about the time that Craigie entered the office of the Foreign Secretary, and was lost in the traffic.
There had recently been changes in the Cabinet, and the late Foreign Secretary, one Campion, had been pushed to a less onerous job, while a younger though still middle-aged man had replaced him. Mr Miles Bettin possessed guts, a good appearance, a vitriolic tongue that would sooner or later get him into trouble with the back-benchers, and – to Craigie the most unlikely attribute of a Foreign Secretary – he knew what he wanted and always tried to get it.
‘Hallo, Craigie, I’ve been expecting you.’ Bettin smiled, buttoning a perfectly cut coat about a perfectly trim torso. ‘Or perhaps I should say I expected you to send for me. Comes to a pretty pass when you only have to press a bell, and there we are!’
Craigie nodded and smiled fleetingly.
‘What’s this about Prell?’
‘I’ve just been dictating orders for the Baj embassy,’ said Bettin. ‘A bad business.’ He fiddled with a small flower in his buttonhole. ‘Killed by an Ogpu agent they say. No real proof yet, and of course Moscow denies it. Anyhow, Prell is dead enough. Shot as he walked from his home to the office.’
Bettin palmed his sleek hair, which was beginning to grey a little at the temples. His lips were pursed; his eyes, grey and shrewd, were narrowed as he regarded Craigie.
‘What’s the murderer’s name?’ asked Craigie.
‘Vonovitch. Stefan Vonovitch.’
‘Oh-ho! An Ogpu agent right enough, or he was up to three months ago. One of their stars. But it doesn’t fit in.’