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Alistair MacLEAN: The Dark Crusader

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Alistair MacLEAN The Dark Crusader

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An advertisement for specialists in different fields of research appears in newspapers. Eight scientists are hired, and all eight disappear. Another ad pops up for a fuel specialist, and that's when John Bentall, a physicist and counter-espionage agent, is called in to find out what happened to the missing scientists and to unravel the sinister plot behind it all.

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‘Eight advertisements,’ the colonel said in his dry quiet voice. ‘Each over a hundred words in length, but you could reproduce them all word for word, if need be. Right, Bentall?’

‘I think I might, sir.’

‘An extraordinary gift,’ he murmured. ‘I envy you. Your comments, Bentall?’

‘That rather delicately worded advertisement for a thrust and propellant specialist to work on aero engines designed for speeds in excess of Mach 10. Properly speaking, there are no such aero engines. Only rocket engines, on which the metallurgical problems have already been solved. They’re after a top-flight fuel boffin, and apart from a handful at some of the major aircraft firms and at a couple of universities every worthwhile fuel specialist in the country works at the Hepworth Research Establishment.’

‘And there may lie the tie-in with your last job.’ He nodded. ‘Just a guess and it could far more easily be wrong than right. Probably a straw from another haystack altogether.’ He doodled in the dust with the tip of his forefinger. ‘What else?’

‘All advertisements from a more or less common source.’ I went on. ‘New Zealand or the Eastern Australian seaboard. All jobs to be filled in a hurry. All offering free and furnished accommodation, house to become the property of the successful applicant, together with salaries at least three times higher than the best of them could expect in this country. They’re obviously after the best brains we have. All specify that the applicants be married but say they’re unable to accommodate children.’

‘Doesn’t that strike you as a trifle unusual?’ Colonel Raine asked idly.

‘No, sir. Quite common for foreign firms to prefer married men. People are often unsettled at first in strange countries and there’s less chance of their packing up and taking the next boat home if they have their families to consider. Those advertisers are paying single fare only. With the money a man could save in the first weeks or months it would be quite impossible to transport his family home.’

‘But there are no families,’ the colonel persisted. ‘Only wives.’

‘Perhaps they’re afraid the patter of tiny feet may distract the highly-paid minds.’ I shrugged. ‘Or limited accommodation. Or the kids to follow later. All it says is “No accommodation for children.”

‘Nothing in all of this strikes you as being in any way sinister?’

‘Superficially, no. With all respect, I question whether it would strike you either, sir. Scores of our best men have been lured overseas in the past years. But if you were to provide me with the information you’re obviously withholding, I might very well begin to see it your way.’

Another momentary tic at the left-hand corner of the mouth, he was really letting himself go today, then he fished out a small dark pipe and started scraping the bowl with a penknife. Without looking up he said: ‘There was a further coincidence that I should have mentioned. All the scientists who accepted those jobs – and their wives – have disappeared. Completely.’

With the last word he gave me a quick up-from-under glance with those arctic eyes, to see how I was taking it. I don’t much like being played cat-and-mouse with, so I gave him back his wooden Indian stare and asked: ‘In this country, en route, or after arrival?’

‘I think maybe you are the right man for the job, Bentall,’ he said inconsequently. ‘All of them left this country. Four seem to have disappeared en route to Australia. From the immigration authorities in New Zealand and Australia we have learned that one landed in Wellington and three others in Sydney. And that’s all they know about them. That’s all any of the authorities in those countries know. They arrived. They vanished. Finished.’

‘Any idea why?’

‘None. Could be several alternatives. I never waste my time guessing, Bentall. All we know – hence, of course, the very great official anxiety – is that though all the men concerned were engaged in industrial research, their unique knowledge could all too easily be put to military uses.’

‘How thorough a search has been made for them, sir?’

‘You can imagine. And I’m led to believe that the police forces in the – ah – antipodes are as efficient as any in the world. But it’s hardly a job for a policeman, eh?’

He leaned back in his chair, puffing dark clouds of foul-smelling smoke into the already overweighted air and looked at me expectantly. I felt tired, irritable and I didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. He was waiting for me to be a bright boy. I supposed I’d better oblige.

‘What am I going out as? A nuclear physicist?’

He patted the arm of his chair. ‘I’ll keep this seat warm for you, my boy. It may be yours some day.’ It’s not easy for an iceberg to sound jovial, but he almost made it. ‘No false colours for you, Bentall. You’re going out as precisely what you were in the days you worked at Hepworth and we discovered your unique gifts in another and slightly less academic field. You’re going out as a specialist in fuel research.’ He extracted a slip of paper from another folder and tossed it across to me. ‘Read all about it. The ninth advertisement. Appeared in the Telegraph a fortnight ago.’

I let the paper lie where it had fallen. I didn’t even look at it.

‘The second application for a fuel specialist,’ I said. ‘Who answered the first? I should know him.’

‘Does that matter, Bentall?’ His voice had dropped a few degrees.

‘Certainly it matters.’ My tone matched his. ‘Perhaps they – whoever “they” may be – picked on a dud. Perhaps he didn’t know enough. But if it was one of the top boys – well, sir, the implication is pretty clear. Something’s happened to make them need a replacement.’

‘It was Dr Charles Fairfield.’

‘Fairfield? My old chief? The second-in-command at Hepworth?’

‘Who else?’

I didn’t answer immediately. I knew Fairfield well, a brilliant scientist and a highly gifted amateur archaeologist. I liked this less and less and my expression should have told Colonel Raine so. But he was examining the ceiling with the minute scrutiny of a man who expected to see it all fall down any second.

‘And you’re asking me to–’ I began.

‘That’s all I’m doing,’ he interrupted. He sounded suddenly tired. It was impossible not to feel a quick sympathy for the man, for the heavy burden he had to carry. ‘I’m not ordering, my boy. I’m only asking.' His eyes were still on the ceiling.

I pulled the paper towards me and looked at the red-ringed advertisement. It was almost but not quite the duplicate of one I’d read a few minutes earlier.

‘Our friends required an immediate cable answer,’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose they must be getting pushed for time. You answered by cable?’

‘In your name and from your home address. I trust you will pardon the liberty,’ he murmured dryly.

‘The Allison and Holden Engineering Company, Sydney,’ I went on. ‘A genuine and respected firm, of course?’

‘Of course. We checked. And the name is that of their personnel manager and an airmail letter that arrived four days ago confirming the appointment was on the genuine letterhead of the firm. Signed in the name of the personnel manager. Only, it wasn’t his signature.’

‘What else do you know, sir?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry. Absolutely nothing. I wish to God I could help more.’

There was a brief silence. Then I pushed the paper back to him and said: ‘Haven’t you rather overlooked the fact that this advert is like the rest – it calls for a married man?’

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