“There’s quite a simple solution to that,” said Mr. Fortescue. “You must be given very fast cars. Anything else?”
“Can’t they fit a cut-out to eliminate interference from power lines?”
“They’re working on it now. It’s the one big snag in the apparatus. But it’s a difficult technical problem.”
“Well, here’s an easy one,” said Mr. Calder. “I want a map-board with an electric light built into it, so that I don’t have to waste time messing about with a torch every time I plot.”
“A good idea,” said Mr. Fortescue. “What about you, Behrens?”
“I didn’t experience any real snags,” said Mr. Behrens. “We were helped by the fact that we were operating on a stretch of moor with very few roads. So, however roughly we plotted, there was never any real doubt where you were and which direction you were going. If there were a lot of little roads, it might be trickier. But I think it’s a perfectly sound method of following a car without having to get within miles of it.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Fortescue. “I think the experiment can be said to have been successful.”
“Was it just an experiment?” said Mr. Calder. “Or had you something practical in mind? Something you intended to use us on.”
Mr. Fortescue said, “I’ve got something very practical in mind. We’re going to use this device to uncover Route M.”
For a long moment nobody spoke, and the only sound was the battering of the rain against the windows. Then Mr. Behrens said, “That’s a very interesting idea. Which of us is going to be the hare on
that
run?”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Fortescue, with a smile, “that you’re both too well known to our friends on the other side to make convincing hares. You’ll be acting as hounds, just as you did today. The hare’s going to be Nichol. Do either of you know him?”
“David Nichol. Early thirties.”
“That’s right.”
“I taught him German – that would have been just after the war. He must have been about fifteen. He was a good linguist, even then.”
“He started learning European languages when he was eight. He speaks half a dozen, and is completely fluent in German and Russian.”
“Unusual application for a boy of eight,” said Mr. Calder.
“He was an unusual boy,” said Mr. Fortescue. “With an unusual background. His father, John Nichol, was an ardent Communist. He was one of the first to join the anti-Franco forces in the field. He was very lucky. He survived for nearly a year.”
“With that background,” said Mr. Calder, “David should be a thoroughgoing Communist himself.”
“And so he might have been. But some very odd stories got back to his mother, about the circumstances of his father’s death. Very odd, indeed. According to his comrades, some of whom ultimately got back to England from internment, or prison camp, John Nichol wasn’t an ordinary battle casualty. There was a mystery about his death. One story, which was widely believed, was that he had been betrayed to a Franco patrol by the orders of the commissar of his battalion. The Russians were becoming alarmed by his growing influence in the group, and came to the conclusion that he ought to be liquidated before he became canonised.”
“There’s a ring of probability about that,” agreed Mr. Calder.
“It was probable enough to convince his mother. She decided to dedicate David – then aged eight, mind you – to the anti-Communist front. She was a woman of considerable imagination, and great persistence. She had her son trained in such a way that he was bound to go into Intelligence, which he did. Of course, we realised as soon as we set eyes on him that we’d got a man in a million. Single-minded, dedicated, with all the basic skills already learned. The difficulty was to know how to use him best.”
Mr. Fortescue stopped to tap out his pipe, and said, “In the end, we sold him to the Russians.”
“With a return ticket, I presume.”
“We hoped so. We sent him to Korea, and arranged for him to be captured. He was an exceptionally intelligent and docile prisoner. They sent him to the Hwei Pé Camp School where he was thoroughly indoctrinated. When Soviet Intelligence was completely happy about him, they arranged for him to be returned to this country on exchange.”
“Nice,” said Mr. Behrens.
“He’s been invaluable,” agreed Mr. Fortescue. “But he can’t keep it up forever. That’s why we’re going to use him to uncover Route M. A final fling.”
“It seems almost a waste,” said Mr. Calder. “I don’t mean that as a criticism,” he added hastily. “You’d be able to judge best. But a well-placed double agent—”
“Discovering how Route M works – where it starts – what the stations are en route, is becoming more important than anything else in our programme. In the last ten years they’ve taken a constant stream of people out by it. Their agents, our agents, scientists, diplomats, all sorts. It’s got to be shut down.”
“If we shut it down, won’t they simply open another route?”
“Oh, certainly. But it’ll take time. It’s the next six months that are important.”
“Who do we think we’re going to lose in the next six months?” said Mr. Calder. “Or is that an indiscreet question?”
“Extremely indiscreet,” said Mr. Fortescue. “But I think I’d better tell you.”
And he did.
When he had finished, Mr. Calder said, “If that’s even on the cards, sir, I agree, of course. It’s worth three of Nichol to put the road closed signs up. How soon will things start moving?”
“The first steps have been taken. Nichol has let his Russian masters know that he is under suspicion. He has asked for asylum, in the USSR, and they’ve promised to get him out. If we suspect him, it follows we won’t allow him out of England by any normal route. He’d be stopped at the port or the airfield. Therefore he’s got to go unofficially. And that means Route M. As soon as he gets his marching orders he’ll tip us off, and we’ll let you know. After that, I can give you very few instructions. You’ll have to deal with each situation as it arises. If you can locate the route without the other side realising what you’re doing, so much the better. If you have to get rough and close it permanently, it can’t be helped.”
“It seems to me,” said Mr. Calder thoughtfully, “that there’s one point where things are bound to get a mite complicated. And that’s when we come to the actual cross-over. A lot’s going to depend on Nichol, then.”
“I recall him quite clearly, now,” said Mr. Behrens. “A shock of thick black hair. A white, rather serious face. Very solemn and self-contained. A person who had elevated self-control to a moral principle.”
“He has never touched alcohol in his life,” said Mr. Fortescue, “and has never had other than a brotherly regard for a woman. Although,” he added, “to judge from modern trends in fiction, even that is not an entirely safe simile these days.”
“He sounds a bit of a prig,” said Mr. Calder.
“Not a prig,” said Mr. Behrens. “A puritan.”
On a day in late April, David Nichol walked along the west bank of Hamble River and out onto the jetty. Ahead of him stretched the estuary, flat and placid. He looked very different from the smart young man in conventional clothes who had caught the train from Waterloo.
His journey had taken him to a room in a small hotel in a back street in Southampton, where he had stripped to the skin and put on the seaman’s rig carefully laid out for him on the bed: corduroy trousers, rubber-soled shoes, and thick grey stockings into which the trouser ends were tucked; a string vest, a collarless shirt, a thick, blue, roll-necked jersey and a duffle coat.
Most of his own clothes went into the wall cupboard. A few personal belongings went into pockets or were squeezed into the top of an already bulging kit bag. Twenty minutes after entering the hotel, he had left it by the back door. From beginning to end he had spoken no word to anyone in the hotel.
His next stop was at a small bicycle shop. Here also he was expected. The owner of the shop – a long man with a squint – had a bicycle ready for him, and helped him to lash the kit bag onto the carrier. He also was a man of few words.
Nichol had stopped at a pull-in for motorists at Botley, and had eaten a meal of eggs and chips, with two mugs of teak-coloured tea and several wedges of bread and butter, after which he had pedalled slowly on his way.
Just short of the jetty which he was making for stood a bungalow with a derelict strip of garden in front, and an over-grown lawn running down to the river behind. After examining the name on the gate, Nichol had wheeled his bicycle boldly into the garden, propped it against the wall, unstrapped the kit bag, shouldered it and walked away up the path to the gate. As he did so he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a curtain in one of the front windows of the bungalow twitch apart and close again.
At the far end of the jetty, a thickset man with a beard was sitting on one of the iron mooring-bollards smoking a pipe, and watching the herring gulls fighting for galley scraps. He turned his head as Nichol approached.
“Nichol?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“You made good time. No hitches?”
“Smooth as clockwork.”
“We shall be sailing in an hour. Can you handle a dinghy?”
“I’ve done most of my rowing at Windsor,” said Nichol, “but as long as it’s calm, I shall make out all right.”
“I could easily row you myself,” said the man. “But it might look a bit odd if the owner took the sculls and the latest-joined member of the crew sat in the stern. I don’t think we’re being watched. But I don’t believe in taking any chances.”
“I’ll manage,” said Nichol.
In fact, he rowed very competently, and they were soon tying up under the stem of the ten-ton Hillyard Bermuda fore-and-aft-rigged sloop which was swinging in the tideway.
“You get below and lie down,” said the owner. “I’ve declared a crew of two. One’s ashore now. The other’s below. They’re both dressed exactly like you. All we’ve got to be careful not to do is to let the three of you appear on deck at the same time.”
Nichol nodded, and disappeared down the orlop ladder. The owner cast a slow glance up the Middle Reach of Hamble River. No one appeared to be the least interested in him or his boat. He extracted a cigar from a case in his breast pocket, and lit it.
Almost exactly fourteen hours later, he said, “Slow ahead. Dead slow. Cut the engine.”
It was an hour before daylight, and the sloop lay a quarter of a mile southwest of the Nez de Jobourg, rising and falling on a gentle swell. A thick white blanket of early morning mist lay over the water.
“Couldn’t have had better weather if we’d booked it in advance,” said the owner. He had been up all night, his eyes were red-rimmed and his voice was hoarse, but he sounded happy.
“Looks all right to me,” said Nichol. “What next?”
“Bertrand will row you ashore in the dinghy. I’m not sure, to within a mile, exactly where you are. But it’s not important. All you have to do it to scramble up the cliff – there are half a dozen paths – and you’ll find yourself on quite a good road. It runs parallel to the top of the cliff, about half a mile inland. It’s got kilometre stones marked Auderville on one side and Beaumont-Hague on the other. You want the stone which shows Auderville – four and Beaumont – six. That’s where the car will be waiting. Clear?”
“Quite clear,” said Nichol. “As I don’t even know your name, I’m afraid I can’t write you a bread and butter letter – but thanks for a lovely trip.”
“Don’t mention it,” said the bearded man. “Your kit bag is already in the boat, I see. Goodbye.”
An hour later the sun was rising, red and glorious, out of the mist. The cutter had rounded the Nez de Jobourg and was out of sight, and Nichol was walking along the grass verge of the road, counting the little white hundred-metre stones – seven, eight, nine. The next kilometre stone must be in the dip ahead. No sign of a car.
Nichol perched on the stone and lowered his kit bag to the ground. It was a quarter to seven. Soon farm traffic would be passing. He would have to make a plan.
Someone came through a gap in the hedge and walked slowly toward him. It was a girl.
His first impressions were of size and colour. She was big and she was blonde. As she came closer, he took in other details. She had a peasant’s nose with no bridge to it, eyes which were pulled fractionally upward at the outer corners, and a generous mouth. She was wearing trousers which looked like jodhpurs but were more generously cut, a polo-necked sweater, and a wind-cheater. She had a businesslike look about her, Nichol thought. The sort of girl who could ride a horse, drive a car or plough a field.
She said, “Mr. Nichol? Put out your right hand. Press the tip of your index finger onto this black stuff. It’ll wash off, I assure you. Now onto this pad. Fine.”
She had taken out a small card which she compared carefully with the fingerprint which Nichol had made on her pad. Then she said, “The car is in a field, two hundred metres down the road. Give me your bag.”
“It’s a bit heavy,” said Nichol. “I’d better take it—”
Before he could say any more she had swung the kit bag onto her shoulder and was walking off down the road.
The car, a dark green Citroën convertible tourer, had been skilfully tucked away in a dip among bushes.
“It is time that you ceased to be a sailor,” said the girl. She spoke in the clear unaccented English of a foreigner who has been very carefully coached in a language, but mostly out of books. “Your travelling clothes are in the kit bag. You had better take off everything you are wearing. Even the underclothes are English.”
“All right,” said Nichol.
The new clothes fitted him well. Grey worsted sports trousers, a heavy silk shirt with open neck and a silk scarf; a grey sports jacket, tighter at the waist than an English tailor would have cut it, and with padded shoulders.
As he took his old clothes off, the girl rolled them up and stowed them in the empty kit bag. Since the girl herself seemed to regard the operation as a matter of routine, Nichol tried to convey the impression that, so far as he was concerned, there was nothing out of the ordinary in stripping to the skin in front of a girl.
When he was dressed, she said, almost as though the operation they had just concluded had effected an introduction between them, “My name, by the way, is Shura.”