Redcap

by Philip McCutchan

  As he got the Renault moving Shaw felt that shudder of metalwork as the lead drove in. There was a sharp pain as a bullet snicked through the side window and grazed across his back; he felt the warm trickle of blood, and then he was clear and away and belting along towards the distant intersection with the main Fontainebleau-Paris road, his headlights beaming into blank darkness along the wetly gleaming surface between shadowy lines of trees. All he must think about now was the overriding urgency of getting to London. If the MAPIACCIND organization was under threat—and Donovan had never said things lightly in the past—then half the world might reasonably be considered as under threat as well: MAPIACCIND—Major (Atom) Powers International Authority for Centralized Control and Inspection of Nuclear Devices—was one of the greatest and most hopeful bids for world security that had ever been attempted, that had yet come out of the mad talk and counter-talk of the early nineteen-sixties with all their frustrated, still-born efforts to find the answer by the banning of A-tests. If that was in danger, then everything that had been built up might crumble away to leave the nations once again at loggerheads, disorganized and suspicious, re-arming, thrown back into the past and at the mercy of any uncontrolled lunatic with a nuclear bomb.

  And of the MAPIACCIND organization the thing known as REDCAP was the very core.

  But—why had Karstad of all people come forward with this information?

  A little later Debonnair asked breathlessly, “Esmonde, wasn’t there anything we could do?”

  Shaw, sick inside, answered her savagely. “God damn it, Deb, couldn’t you see? He was sawn in half.” As soon as he’d said that, he regretted it. With the man’s daughter in the back, it had been a terrible thing to say; and silently he cursed his tongue. Then, controlling his feelings, he asked:

  “How’s the nerve, Deb?”

  “Badly shaken but otherwise intact.” She spoke lightly, but he was aware of a terrible tenseness behind the tone. “Why?”

  “Because I want you to drive. Fast. I’ve got something to do. All right?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Good girl!” Shaw knew she would be reliable—she’d done some dangerous jobs for him before, such as the time they had chased over half of southern Spain looking for the one man who could prevent tragedy in Gibraltar. He stopped the car, scrambled over the seat into the back. Debonnair slid across behind the wheel. Shaw called, “Right, she’s all yours. Let’s go.”

  As she engaged the gears, Shaw bent down towards Judith. She was crumpled in a corner, seemingly in a dead faint. Or worse. Quickly Shaw examined her, felt for her heart. It was all right; and he could find no wound, no blood. He felt relief; but there was no more time to think about the girl just now. The Renault was streaking along the slippery surface again, touching ninety. Debonnair, staring ahead along the probing beams through an insect-dotted windscreen, watched the road rush to meet her and ribbon away beneath the spinning wheels. The car swung horribly, protestingly, as she took it fast round a bend, and Shaw could hear the scream of rubber.

  Debonnair called out, “Think the boys’ll be behind, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think they’ll catch up?”

  “Don’t know. If they do, I’m going to get them before they get us.” Shaw had the heavy Service revolver in his hand again, and now he smashed it through the rear window. The glass cobwebbed away from the hole. He smashed again and again until he had cleared the glass away. Soon after there was a flicker of headlights behind, dancing up and down the trees, giving the thick green a look of silver. Somebody was in a hurry, was eating up the kilometres. They had had very little start, and it looked as though the pursuit was gaining fast now. Shaw called,

  “Can you get any more out of her, Deb?”

  “She’s going all she can.” Her voice was tense, nervy.

  He said, “All right. Well—they’re coming. It must be them. And they’ve got the legs of us. Just keep going and forget about me unless I give you an order. You know what to do if I get hurt. Straight to the Embassy, get them to put you aboard the first plane for London. Ring Latymer first on the closed line. Don’t take any chances.”

  There was a small choking sound from Debonnair, and then Shaw put everything out of his mind except the job immediately in hand. He turned back to the window. Twin beams were coming up very fast now, dancing up a slight rise, round a bend, flickering again on the trees and the verge-stones, gleaming on the wet surface. He heard the roar of a powerful engine, the scream of tyres as the car came round that bend, cutting it very close to the verge. Then he saw the stab of flame, heard the smack of the bullets, the buzz of them singing past like vicious bees along the sides of the racing, rocking car.

  He snapped, “Slow a little, Deb. Just enough to put ’em off their stroke . . . now!”

  He hooked an arm over the empty rear window’s rim, steadying himself; even so he lurched backwards as the Renault jerked suddenly under slight footbrake pressure. He recovered himself, held steady again. Debonnair had got his intentions beautifully. Shaw levelled his gun through the window. He was utterly cool, icy, almost detached . . . as though he was in a rifle-range. Just as he had intended, the pursuing driver had been shaken up by the sudden drop in speed. He swerved a little, ran up close, and then as he rammed on his brakes the firing stopped. Shaw could imagine the men inside tumbling about as the vehicle checked so abruptly; and in that moment he squeezed the trigger of his heavy revolver, and it kicked back in his fist, once, twice . . . and then the firing began again. There was a tearing jag of pain in the flesh of his left upper arm and he felt the thick surge of blood; and then he fired a third time, as his sights came dead on to the pallid face of the man behind the wheel. His hand was perfectly steady and his aim was beautiful. The driver’s face simply seemed to erase itself and the vehicle pulled right over to its offside, turned around, reared on to two wheels, climbed the white-painted stones marking the verge, leapt into the air and fell back with a splintering crash on to its canvas roof.

  Shaw called, “Stop her, Deb!”

  She screamed the Renault to a halt and pulled into the side. She asked breathlessly, “You’re not going back there?”

  He licked his lips, which had gone very dry. “I’ll have to. May be some one alive. And I might find out more of what Donovan was trying to say, if there’s anyone fit to talk.”

  He pushed the door open and jumped out, looked back quickly at Debonnair’s white face. He told her gruffly, “Stay inside. Look after Judith. Don’t follow me—that’s an order.” Then he turned away, went back along the road, keeping in the shelter of the trees, his gun ready in his hand, moved swiftly and silently through the darkness, only his white evening shirt-front faintly visible as a smudge in the night. Insects flew into his face; an owl, disturbed in its nightly occupations, hooted loudly, eerily, went past with a whirr of outraged wings. No traffic came along the road. Already there was a flicker of light from the wreck and then, just a moment after, a lick of flame curled up. Shaw put on speed; as he came near the shattered car there was a loud whoompf and flames shot roaring into the air, pinnacled from a surround of liquid fire which had the whole car in its grasp now, pinnacled almost to the treetops. The heat reached out to Shaw, singed his skin, his hair, his clothing. He pulled his dinner-jacket collar up around his neck and face and edged as near as he could. The car’s roof had crushed so that the chassis lay flush with the earth. An arm stuck out, pinned between metal and ground; there was a pool of blood where broken glass had ripped an artery. The arm was still, was not feeling the red flame. Shaw’s mind penetrated into the car, visualized the heap of tumbled bodies, broken bodies thrown about in the grotesque attitudes of sudden and violent death . . . and then he was forced back as the breeze fanned the flames into a roaring inferno with a white-hot metal core, a funeral pyre from which came the sharp crack of exploding cartridges, the zing of aimlessly driven bullets.

  Shaw turned away, put up his gun, and wiped his streaming
face with the sleeve of his jacket. He was drenched through and through with sweat, and not only from that intense heat; he was trembling, his legs felt weak, as though they were about to crumple, and there was a dreadful nausea rising up inside him. He found he was cursing savagely, blaspheming against the Outfit and against Latymer, against the whole set of circumstances which had forced him into this kind of game in the first place. He felt no pity for those men, for they had killed John Donovan—but the manner of their death revolted him.

  Then he ran back to the Renault and slid into the driving seat. Debonnair was in the back with Judith. He heard the girl sobbing. Debonnair leaned forward, asked tensely: “Well?”

  “Nothing living.”

  She nodded, reached out and put a hand on his cheek,

  gently, understandingly. She said, “That arm, Esmonde. You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing much.”

  “I’m going to put something on it, anyway.” She added, “Don’t look.”

  Obediently he sat there; he heard a rustling as Debonnair stripped off some of her clothing, heard the ripping of fabric. She said, “Can you get your coat off?”

  “I think so.” He got out into the road, and she came to help him. She rolled up his shirt-sleeve. It wasn’t a bad wound, but it was bleeding quite a lot. Tightly she bound it up, asked: “Want me to go on driving?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll manage. Get in the back with Judith, there’s a good girl. Do what you can for her, Deb.”

  “Of course.” They got back in, and as he started up Shaw tried not to listen to the girl’s desperate crying, to the sobs which were shaking her body as she lay in Debonnair’s arms. He put his whole mind to his driving and he sent the Renault flat out for Paris, the Faubourg St Honoré , and the British Embassy.

  Within a few hours of reaching the Embassy and after a bath, a change of clothing, breakfast, and the attentions of a doctor for his arm and back, Shaw and the two girls were getting off the B.E.A. flight at Heathrow and then the car was whisking them along cleared roads to the Admiralty. Thompson, the short, sturdy ex-petty officer who had once been Latymer’s coxswain in a seagoing ship, was driving; alongside him was a second driver. As the car skirted West Kensington, Thompson altered course, went along Gliddon Road to Shaw’s own flat.

  The second man moved into the driving-seat as the girls got out with Thompson. Shaw said, “I know you've got your orders, Thompson. Don’t let ’em out of your sight.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Thompson answered briskly. “I’ll stick like a leech, sir.”

  “Good man! Thanks.” Shaw leaned back on the cushions as the car moved off, speeding for Whitehall. On arrival at the Horse Guards Shaw was taken straight up to Miss Larkin’s office in the old Admiralty building, and there he found himself looking once again at the inner door with that white card bearing the simple and misleading inscription:

  Mr G. E. D. Latymer.

  Shaw was one of the very few people who knew that this name hid the identity of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Charteris, K.C.B., D.S.O. and two bars, D.S.C., supposedly deceased; Shaw was one of the few who had worked with the Admiral in the old days, and so was privileged, as few others were privileged, to take his orders direct from the Old Man himself. Mr Under-Secretary Latymer, as the Service departments officially knew Sir Henry Charteris these days—just a very senior civil servant doing a humdrum job in routine intelligence—which, on the surface, he was. But Latymer was in fact Chief of Special Services, Naval Intelligence Division—that very hush-hush organization within an organization—and thus in effect head of the structure known colloquially as the ‘Outfit,’ the great organization which even in these days of a declining seagoing navy had feelers reaching sometimes beyond the confines of purely Admiralty business and stretching to the ends of the earth; and whenever Shaw stood outside that door at the start of a mission, the pain in his guts was at its worst.

  This was the doorway to so many killings and assignments and past memories.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Latymer was standing at the big double windows of his room, glaring out across Horse Guards Parade towards Westminster. His oval face was expressionless—expressionless because of those massive skin grafts which, after the bomb had gone off so many years ago in his Eaton Square flat, had altered his appearance sufficiently to make possible his change of identity —a change which had in fact been essential if he was to retain his usefulness once he had become a marked man. Now, despite the lack of expression, he was clearly troubled. Very troubled. He stood, breathing heavily through his nose, his hands clasped behind his thick back, heavy shoulders braced very square, body rising and falling gently on his toes. He always stood like that, as though he was still on his quarterdeck, or was moving to the lift of a cruiser’s bridge in a seaway. Like Shaw himself, the Old Man would have given anything to have returned to sea, to have lived out his active life as the sailor he had been trained from boyhood to be. But, again like Shaw himself, he was far too valuable to be returned to general service, even had there been enough ships at sea to sustain his high-ranking presence afloat.

  His heels came down finally and he slewed round, marched back towards his desk, the big, leather-topped desk which was always kept so highly polished that he could see his face in the old, time-worn shagreen surface. As he approached there was a subdued buzz and a red bobble of glass glowed for three seconds precisely in a small contraption on the right-hand side of the desk-top. Latymer sat down, reached for a switch, and depressed it all in one rhythmic movement.

  Miss Larkin’s precise, impersonal voice—the voice upon which, Latymer sometimes impishly thought, he could almost see the sensible spectacles—floated into the room. “Commander Shaw is here, Mr Latymer.”

  “Tell him to come in.”

  The tone was quiet, but curt and hard. As the switch flicked back, the door opened. No one had ever kept Latymer waiting . . . he gave a tight, very fleeting smile, got to his feet as Shaw entered, and stretched out to take the agent’s hand. His sharp glance flickered over Shaw, took in the injured arm, the sleeve which was bulged out by the bandage. He asked, “Had a bad spin already?”

  “It’s all right now, sir.”

  “Answer the question, blast you!”

  Shaw flushed a little. “Yes, sir.”

  Latymer’s green eyes narrowed, looked at him keenly once more. “It’s not going to affect your mobility?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Because you’re going to get pretty mobile shortly.” Latymer sat heavily, big hands splayed, finger-tips hooked over the ends of his chair-arms. He gestured towards a leather study chair facing his desk. “Now—sit down and tell me the whole thing from the beginning.”

  “There’s not very much to tell, sir, beyond what I said on the phone.” Shaw sat down. He went right through the night’s events, leaving nothing out; and when he had finished, Latymer got up again and crossed the room slowly, going over to the window. After a while he spoke with his back to Shaw.

  He said, “Of course, I’ve known for some time that Donovan was alive.”

  Shaw felt a sense of shock. “You have, sir?”

  “Information did come through to that effect, yes. If you’re wondering why I never told you, Shaw, the answer is simply this: you would have wanted to try to clear him —and I can assure you it would have meant the end for Donovan if the fact that he was alive had been publicized. Many people in this country and in Norway were determined to get him, you know—that’s just one of the difficulties I’m up against now, as a matter of fact. I’ll explain more in a moment. Meanwhile, what about the women?”

  “Left in my flat as you told me, sir.” Shaw hesitated.

  “They won’t talk to anyone. The Donovan girl—or Dangan, that’s the name she uses now, it was her mother’s maiden name, I saw it on her passport—she risked a lot to get word through to me. She won’t take any chances of messing things up now.”

  Latymer turned, walked back to his de
sk and sat down. He said, “Of course. And your Miss Delacroix is perfectly all right. I know that.” He frowned. “It’s not that that I’m worried about. Trouble is, I’ll have to put a man on ’em from now on. They know just as much as you, don’t they? They may be interfered with.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll have to question the Donovan girl, of course.”

  Shaw said, “She doesn’t know anything, sir. I did try to question her myself, after we’d been to the Embassy, and all she knew was what she told me before we met her father. I’m sure she’s speaking the truth.” He paused, then added: “She’s very upset, sir, naturally. I think she’s had all she can take, at any rate for a day or so.”

  Latymer made a growling sound and shifted irritably. He said, “I suppose you’re right. Donovan wouldn’t have told her anything important, certainly. Anyway—forget the women for a while, Shaw.” He pushed across a heavy silver cigarette-box. Shaw took a cigarette and Latymer flicked a desk lighter. As Shaw bent towards the tiny flame he glanced up briefly at his chief. He thought, in that moment, that he’d never seen the Old Man look so serious before. And no wonder.

  Latymer sat back, puffing at his cigarette. A cloud of blue smoke wreathed his face. He said abruptly, “Tell me, Shaw. Are you personally quite convinced that Donovan was telling the truth as he knew it?”

  “As he knew it, sir, yes. Undoubtedly. I knew him very well. He always made certain. That was his chief characteristic—absolute certainty. But his source! That does worry me. Why on earth should Karstad of all people suddenly develop a solicitude for us?”

  “Well, quite. But we just don’t know. Personally, like you, I’m prepared to take Donovan’s word—and the explanation of Karstad’s part in it, was no doubt in what Donovan hadn’t time to say.” He added, “I always felt as sure as you that Donovan had been framed. I’d have trusted him anywhere. Still do.”