Алистер Маклин - Ice Station Zebra

‘What the hell did you expect? That the unknown X would go about without a mark on him, without as much as a cigarette burn, proclaiming to the world that he had been the one who had been throwing matches about and had then thoughtfully stood to one side? Local colour. He had to get himself burnt.’

‘It doesn’t follow,’ Hansen said. ‘He wasn’t to know that anyone was going to get suspicious and start investigating.’

‘You’ll be well advised to join your captain in keeping out of the detecting racket,’ I said shortly. ‘The men behind this are top-flight experts with far-reaching contacts – part of a criminal octopus with tentacles so long that it can even reach out and sabotage your ship in the Holy Loch. Why they did that, I don’t know. What matters is that top-flight operators like those never take chances. They always operate on the assumption that they may be found out. They take every possible precaution against every possible eventuality. Besides, when the fire was at its height – we don’t know the story of that, yet – the killer would have had to pitch in and rescue those trapped. It would have seemed damned odd if he hadn’t. And so he got burnt.’

‘My God.’ Swanson’s teeth were beginning to chatter with the cold but he didn’t seem to notice it. ‘What a hellish set-up.’

‘Isn’t it? I dare say there’s nothing in your navy regulations to cover this lot.’

‘But what – what are we going to do?’

‘We call the cops. That’s me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. I have more authority, more official backing, more scope, more power and more freedom of action than any cop you ever saw. You must believe me. What I say is true.’

‘I’m beginning to believe it is true,’ Swanson said in slow thoughtfulness. ‘I’ve been wondering more and more about you in the past twenty-four hours. I’ve kept telling myself I was wrong, even ten minutes before I kept telling myself. You’re a policeman? Or detective?’

‘Naval officer. Intelligence. I have credentials in my suitcase which I am empowered to show in an emergency.’ It didn’t seem the time to tell him just how wide a selection of credentials I did have. ‘This is the emergency.’

‘But – but you are a doctor.’

‘Sure I am. A navy doctor – on the side. My speciality is investigating sabotage in the U.K. armed forces. The cover-up of research doctor is the ideal one. My duties are deliberately vague and I have the power to poke and pry into all sorts of corners and situations and talk to all sorts of people on the grounds of being an investigating psychologist that would be impossible for the average serving officer.’

There was a long silence, then Swanson said bitterly: ‘You might have told us before this.’

‘I might have broadcast it all over your Tannoy system. Why the hell should I? I don’t want to trip over blundering amateurs every step I take. Ask any cop. The biggest menace of his life is the self-appointed Sherlock. Besides, I couldn’t trust you, and before you start getting all hot and bothered about that I might add that I don’t mean you’d deliberately give me away or anything like that but that you might inadvertently give me away. Now I’ve no option but to tell you what I can and chance the consequences. Why couldn’t you just have accepted that directive from your Director of Naval Operations and acted accordingly?’

‘Directive?’ Hansen looked at Swanson. ‘What directive?’

‘Orders from Washington to give Dr Carpenter here carte blanche for practically everything. Be reasonable, Carpenter. I don’t like operating in the dark and I’m naturally suspicious. You came aboard in highly questionable circumstances. You knew too damn’ much about submarines. You were as evasive as hell. You had this sabotage theory all cut and dried. Damn it, man, of course I had reservations. Wouldn’t you have had, in my place?’

‘I suppose so. I don’t know. Me, I obey orders.’

‘Uh-huh. And your orders in this case?’

‘Meaning what exactly is all this about,’ I sighed. ‘It would have to come to this. You must be told now – and you’ll understand why your Director of Naval Operations was so anxious that you give me every help possible.’

‘We can believe this one?’ Swanson asked.

‘You can believe this one. The story I spun back in the Holy Loch wasn’t all malarkey – I just dressed it up a bit to make sure you’d take me along. They did indeed have a very special item of equipment here – an electronic marvel that was used for monitoring the count-down of Soviet missiles and pin-pointing their locations. This machine was kept in one of the huts now destroyed – the second from the west in the south now. Night and day a giant captive radiosonde balloon reached thirty thousand feet up into the sky – but it had no radio attached. It was just a huge aerial. Incidentally, I should think that is the reason why the fuel oil appears to have been flung over so large an area – an explosion caused by the bursting of the hydrogen cylinders used to inflate the balloons. They were stored in the fuel hut.’

‘Did everybody in Zebra know about this monitoring machine?’

‘No. Most of them thought it a device for investigating cosmic rays. Only four people knew what it really was – my brother and the three others who all slept in the hut that housed this machine. Now the hut is destroyed. The free world’s most advanced listening-post. You wonder why your D.N.O. was so anxious?’

‘Four men?’ Swanson looked at me, a faint speculation still in his eye. ‘Which four men, Dr Carpenter?’

‘Do you have to ask? Four of the seven men you see lying here, Commander.’

He stared down at the floor then looked quickly away. He said: ‘You mentioned that you were convinced even before we left port that something was far wrong. Why?’

‘My brother had a top-secret code. We had messages sent by himself – he was an expert radio operator. One said that there had been two separate attempts to wreck the monitor. He didn’t go into details. Another said that he had been attacked and left unconscious when making a midnight check and found someone bleeding off the gas from the hydrogen cylinders – without the radiosonde aerial the monitor would have been useless. He was lucky, he was out only for a few minutes, as long again and he would have frozen to death. In the circumstances did you expect me to believe that the fire was unconnected with the attempts to sabotage the monitor?’

‘But how would anyone know what it was?’ Hansen objected. ‘Apart from your brother and the other three men, that is?’ Like Swanson, he glanced at the floor and, like Swanson, looked as hurriedly away. ‘For my money this is the work of a psycho. A madman. A coldly calculating criminal would – well, he wouldn’t go in for wholesale murder like this. But a psycho would.’

‘Three hours ago,’ I said, ‘before you loaded the torpedo into number three tube you checked the manually controlled levers and the warning lights for the tube bow-caps. In the one case you found that the levers had been disconnected in the open position: in the other you found that the wires had been crossed in a junction-box. Do you think that was the work of a psycho? Another psycho?’

He said nothing. Swanson said: ‘What can I do to help, Dr Carpenter?’

‘What are you willing to do, Commander?’

‘I will not hand over command of the Dolphin.’ He smiled, but he wasn’t feeling like smiling. ‘Short of that, I – and the crew of the Dolphin – are at your complete disposal. You name it, Doctor, that’s all.’

‘This time you believe my story?’