by John Creasey
‘I see. So if I don’t lead them off, you’ll shop me, will you? And what when I’ve talked?’
‘I’m not likely to give your name,’ said Marlin, very slowly, ‘while you’re alive. I have an idea I have overestimated your powers, my friend.’
He didn’t hear Benson’s reply, for he hung up. For five minutes he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. When he had needed work of a certain nature done, he had always employed Benson and Benson’s men. He was beginning to think Benson’s period of usefulness was over, and that the men would take orders from one leader as readily as another.
‘Yes,’ murmured Gregory Marlin to himself, ‘I think that’s it.’ He stood up and reached for his hat, and his smile was a long way from pleasant. ‘This is a lot too big for Benson to bungle. And if that man Arran is a fair specimen of Craigie’s men, there isn’t much trouble coming from that quarter.’
‘That man Arran’ was in his Auveley Street flat some thirty minutes later, opening a second cable from Gordon Craigie. He decoded it rapidly—and smiled more widely than at any time since Toby had been shot.
For the message read:
‘FLYING BACK ARRIVING MIDNIGHT TO-MORROW TENTH.’
4
Cause for concern
Gordon Graigie had not told the truth to the Arrans when he had left England for the States. He had guessed their anxiety to be up and doing would keep them in a ferment while he was away, and he was anxious that they should be at their best when eventually the need for action arrived. At that time Craigie’s agents were—as Benson had discovered—low in numbers and possessed of no outstanding member, and Craigie was particularly anxious to use his forces to the best of their ability. He sighed for a man to replace Jim Burke, who had been married six months earlier, but knew he was not likely to find one before this job was finished.
The ‘job’ was no more than a whisper when he had left for America. In three weeks there, it had developed into a bellow that even a dubious American Intelligence Bureau could not ignore. Not that the Americans were less perceptive than Craigie: it was simply that to them, the thing was incredible.
It had started three years before—three years meant little to Department Z—when H.M.S. Drune, one of the new battle-cruisers, had been damaged while in dock after her first long trial. It had been followed by a series of major and minor sabotage efforts, some of which had been successful and some frustrated—the latter usually by accident. For seven or eight weeks, in fact, a section of the British Press had been thundering warnings of a Communist threat, and even those who had never considered Communism could become a menace to this island, had begun to get worried. After the Drune trouble, the engines of three smaller vessels had been damaged extensively: two attempts to cause explosions at munitions factories had been only partly prevented: one fire at a War Department petrol store had destroyed five thousand gallons of oil, killed three men and injured a dozen. That was not all. Attempts, most of them fruitless, to break into Government experimental air stations had been made, and two of the latest model troop-carrying aircraft had crashed without explanation during trial flights, incurring the loss of several men. Deviously and persistently the sabotage continued.
If every incident had found its way into the press the war scare would have become even greater than it was. The Government might quieten the demands for interference in the Italo-Abyssinian struggle and the internal massacre in Spain; it could try to subdue the Palestine riots by shipping a few thousand reservists, and gain the approbation of most of the press and a goodly portion of the public, but it could not have convinced a very perturbed nation that there was nothing sinister in the sabotage and the attempts to do serious damage to sections of every branch of the fighting forces.
Perhaps only Craigie and half a dozen Cabinet Ministers, with the inevitable permanent staff, knew the real gravity of the situation. Naturally, Craigie had been asked to get to the bottom of it; as naturally he was attempting to do so.
He had still been trying to sort the wheat from the chaff when he heard of the Akren catastrophe. America’s finest and newest battleship—three months from the shipyard, and internationally acknowledged to be the biggest and most impregnable vessel on the Seven Seas, viewed by the Americans as a challenge and a warning to those European countries snarling at each other’s throats to keep their side of the Atlantic—sank with all hands in something under ten minutes. The crews of a dozen smaller craft, part of the flotilla escorting the triumphant battleship on her maiden voyage, first saw the billowing clouds and the tongues of yellow flame, then heard the dreadful detonation—and stared, helpless and dumbfounded, as the juggernaut of the seas went down.
Remarkably, only the German and Italian press blamed the affair on to the ‘Red’ menace. Every other country’s newspapers put it down to an accident due to a fault in the Akren’s boilers. The world was in no state for a story of sabotage on so grand a scale—in fact, a virtual act of war—to fly on the wings of rumour, and even the more excitable Press saw the wisdom of doing nothing to inflame public opinion. But the Governments of the world were ready and waiting. The armaments race increased and the tension in High Circles was greater, perhaps, than at any time since the early days of August 1914.
So Gordon Craigie had gone to America.
There he found that, almost to a man, the authorities preferred to view the catastrophe as an accident. He met a very few who subscribed to his opinion that some country—it was far too early to say which—had deliberately wrecked the Akren, and as deliberately had damaged Government factories and machines in both England and America.
A myriad of inquiries had been set on foot. Craigie admitted the American Intelligence Bureau had reduced investigation to a fine art, but considered it owed a great deal to chance. And, this time, the chance was presented—as so often happened—through a woman.
Her name was Rampaz. She was young, more than usually good to look upon, soft-voiced and well-dressed. She went to Police Headquarters in New York, composed enough but anxious and worried. Her husband had been missing for five weeks; the last time she had seen him he had said he was going to smuggle himself on board the Akren. She had not believed it possible, but as he was still missing she was beginning to fear it had happened. Could the police give her any information?
Craigie and three other men saw her. They learned that Jake Rampaz was a journalist of reputed Communist leanings, although his wife assured them it was all talk; he was the kindest soul alive, her Jake—if he was alive. She caught her breath in shocked awareness when she added that, and Craigie felt really sorry for her. But she was their first real lead: the questioning had to go on. Among the things she told them was that Rampaz had been a close friend of a certain Julian Northway, who operated on Wall Street. And Rampaz had come home from seeing Northway the day he had boasted he would stow away aboard the Akren...
There are methods of interrogation in America that do not bear talking about. Although Craigie admitted they were justified up to a point—and knew that his own agents had, unofficially, resorted to similar measures in emergencies, he did not like them. Still, he took care to be present every time Northway—a naturalised American who had been born in England—was interrogated. He saw the man age from thirty-five to fifty-five in a week. He saw him a physical wreck, prostrate with exhaustion before he made any admission.
Yes, yes, he had bribed Rampaz to get aboard—they would find the papers in a small office at Manhattan Buildings. If they would only let him sleep... God, he must sleep! He hadn’t slept for two hundred hours...
They found the papers and proved the admission true. They discovered that Rampaz—and also crew members of acknowledged Communist tendencies—had been aboard the Akren on the ill-fated voyage. They discovered a list of names and addresses of people in all countries, and among them was that of Gregory Marlin, of 88 Warriter Street, London, E.C.4...
But although the interrogation of Julian Northway was exhaustive, he would no
t admit the list of names and addresses to be anything more than a record of brokers in various capitals. Gordon Craigie and the others admitted that Northway was, if nothing else, a very brave man.
Every man mentioned on the list was a stock-and-share broker, but every name had been communicated to the proper quarters in the various capitals, for urgent investigation. So that when Horace Miller had taken it upon himself to report the Arran shooting to the Home Office, the Home Office had radio-telephoned Craigie at once.
Craigie was in New York when the call came. After giving certain instructions concerning Gregory Marlin, he replaced the receiver thoughtfully, then glanced across the room at the big man who sat there: Thomas Lander, Governor of New York.
‘I want to fly back to England,’ he told him, ‘can you recommend a pilot?’
‘You’re serious?’ Lander rumbled.
Craigie nodded, and Lander said reflectively: ‘Well, you know Bob Kerr’s still in town?’
Kerr’s flight from England a month before had been a nine days’ wonder, easily breaking the west-to-east time record. But his effort to repeat the triumph on the return flight had failed when Wishing Bone, his three-engined monoplane, developed a technical fault.
‘I’m told he’s hoping to get off in a day or two,’ Lander volunteered, ‘Like me to bring him here?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ Craigie said, gratefully.
An hour later, Lander was introducing him to the man whose face was already thoroughly familiar to him from newspaper photographs. There was a ruggedness about Robert McMillan Kerr’s features that Craigie liked, and he warmed to the man as he felt the firm handshake and met the calm, grey eyes.
Craigie had been described by Lander as a personal friend, anxious for business reasons to return to London in a hurry, and he asked: ‘Is it possible to get back tomorrow night?’
‘No,’ said Kerr bluntly. ‘That would mean leaving by midnight tonight, at the latest, and the wind isn’t likely to change. Rough over the Atlantic, and thunder going round. No chance at all, Mr. Craigie. Sorry.’
‘What would be the earliest?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps two days; perhaps two weeks.’
‘I see.’ Craigie hesitated, then asked: ‘I suppose nothing would induce you to change your mind? Money is no object.’
‘I don’t take risks for money,’ Kerr said flatly.
‘You have taken plenty, in your time.’
‘When it’s suited me,’ Kerr retorted. Then as Craigie grinned quick appreciation, he smiled as if suddenly recognising a kindred spirit in the shrewd-eyed older man.
‘Now I wonder,’ Craigie hazarded, ‘if you’d be more interested if I told you this was Government business?’
There was a change of expression in Kerr’s eyes.
‘Which Government?’
‘At the moment, mainly Britain’s.’
‘Is that all you can tell me?’
‘Yes,’ said Craigie, ‘apart from the fact that if you won’t take me, I’ll have to find someone who will. I must be in England, if it’s humanly possible, to-morrow night. It is not...’ Craigie smiled—‘a matter of money; although as I said, money is no object.’
‘Well, now.’ Kerr paused to light a cigarette: ‘I can’t promise to get you to England. I’ve been through worse blows than there are at the moment, but of course we don’t know what we’ll meet halfway across. Bit of a risk.’
For an understatement, that was very close to the limit, and Craigie smiled at Lander’s rumbling chuckle as he told Kerr drily: ‘Well, if you’ll take it, I will. Your machine is ready, isn’t it?’
‘It only needs fuelling. What time do you want to get to London?’
‘About midnight or earlier.’
‘Call it midnight or never!’ said Bob Kerr. He stood up and extended his hand. ‘I’ll have to hurry, Mr. Craigie, to get shipshape in time. It’s at the Brooklyn field, and we can set off as soon after ten as you like.’
As easily as that, the association between Craigie and Kerr began. Neither of them knew how long it was going to last or where it was going to end, and neither of them cared. The first job was to get to England.
The London morning papers printed a stop-press to say that Robert Kerr, the famous long-distance flier, was starting his return flight in the Wishing Bone that day, possibly with a passenger. The evening papers had news of the flight sprawled across their front pages, with plenty of recent photographs of Kerr but none of his passenger, now named as ‘Arthur Strong, an American financier.’ The press were too delighted with their national hero to care about the publicity-shy Mr. Strong: the flight had been accomplished in a record sixteen-and-a-half hours and the landing at Heston had been perfect.
At ten-thirty, Craigie and Kerr climbed into a closed saloon car and were driven to London.
Both were silent, for the first few minutes, Craigie reliving the incredible experience of that flight. He knew he would remember all his life the appalling darkness, the buffeting they had endured a hundred times, the mountainous waves they had seen during the first hours of daylight, when they had been forced perilously close to the surface of the sea.
From time to time, Kerr had remarked that it was ‘a bit rough’, and invariably Craigie had responded: ‘Making good time, aren’t we?’ And Kerr would nod approval, and press calmly on...
They were on the Great West Road, when Kerr spoke. He was smoking a pipe, and Craigie was wishing for his beloved meerschaum, tucked away in the single suitcase he had brought with him.
‘Darned sight safer up there,’ Kerr gestured skywards with his pipe, ‘than on the roads. Enjoy the flight?’
‘I did not,’ said Craigie simply. ‘I didn’t think we’d make it.’
Kerr chuckled.
‘It’s no fun if you’re not used to it and it’s a damned bore when you are. I like the air,’ he added, ‘but there’s a time to finish. You can tempt fate too long. I think I’ll drop it. For a bit, anyhow.’
Craigie nodded thoughtfully.
‘Have you anything else in mind?’
‘No. I could do with a rest, anyhow.’
‘Particularly anxious to have one?’
Kerr regarded him reflectively. In the dim light of the car interior, Craigie’s face looked singularly gaunt and almost bleak, yet there was an air of such completely assured authority about him that Kerr, intrigued despite himself, found himself saying a cautious: ‘Well—it depends.’
‘I might be able to put a proposition to you, Kerr,’ said Craigie, ‘that would be worse than the flight. More dangerous.’
‘How, more dangerous?’
‘There wouldn’t be so much chance of getting away with it,’ Craigie told him quietly. ‘You might, but you’d be up against trouble nearly all the time. Most men—’ Craigie often took big decisions quickly, and he was prepared to say enough, now, to let Kerr guess what the job was—’have lasted less than a year when they’ve been in the thick of it. Some have managed to get away all right. But the best men don’t last long.’
‘Hmm.’ Kerr drew at his pipe in silence for a good thirty seconds, then: ‘It sounds unpleasant. Is it in England?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Hmm,’ Kerr repeated. ‘All right. I’ll think it over. If you want me, let me know.’
‘If you come into it you’ll have a deuce of a job to get out,’ Craigie warned.
‘There are times when I’ve been in the Bone,’ said Kerr with a rare smile, ‘and never expected to get out at all. Unofficial service work, I take it?’ he added, seeing Craigie did not want to take the tacitly offered chance of dropping the subject for the time being.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the trouble at the moment?’
‘Remember the Akren?’ Craigie asked quietly.
The man he had met less than twenty-four hours before, nodded and looked straight ahead, thinking slowly and coolly. This was a very different development from what Kerr had expected, but h
e liked the sound of it. The crashing of the two troop-carriers had always appeared to him to be a great deal more than accidental. He had never heard of Craigie by name, but he knew of the existence of an Intelligence Department, and could put two and two together.
‘You think it was sabotage?’ he asked, and Craigie’s early good impression strengthened.
‘I’m sure of it. So were a lot of other things.’
‘I’ve wondered. Any idea who’s behind it?’
‘Ideas, yes, but nothing else.’
‘Russia, on the surface, of course?’
‘Of course,’ admitted Craigie. ‘But you know, we need two things in mind, right now. Communism on one side Fascism on the other.’
‘And nothing to choose between them,’ Kerr opined.
‘I don’t know. We haven’t seen enough of either of them, yet.’ Craigie knew his remark would have shocked anyone of confirmed political views, but he had no objection to shocking people. This may be commercial, for all we know.’
Kerr allowed himself another rare smile.
The merchants of death, eh?’
‘Well,’ said Craigie, ‘I’ve met some queer things in the past few years, Kerr, and that title’s not inappropriate at times. This job isn’t fixed, you know. It might be one of a dozen things, and there’s just a possibility that there are more genuine accidents than I like to admit.’
‘Not much of a possibility,’ said Kerr. ‘At least I don’t think so. I hope you don’t want to harness me straight away? I’m dog tired. Could hardly keep awake the last couple of hours over, and did I wish you could handle the controls?’
Craigie smiled.
‘It’s probably as well I couldn’t. No, there’s no hurry to-night. But to-morrow, if you’ll come and see me? Third door along Great Scotland Yard, off Whitehall. Ring three times and I’ll open for you. Oh—better give me an address, in case there’s anything urgent.’