Samuel Edwards - Neptune

Adrienne felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. The Neptune looked like no other vessel afloat in the world, and if she remained in the area for as long as a week to ten days the Russians and Chinese would be certain to guess she wasn’t searching for undersea coal deposits this far from home.

Captain Humphries sighed. ‘A lot of obstacles have been overcome since you and your friends in Washington first dreamed up Project Neptune, Frank. You’ve invented and built some remarkable machinery and gear, and this ship is a marvel. But not even the Corporation has the skill and ingenuity to fight the forces of Nature. If a typhoon is going to make us its target, we’ll just have to batten down, ride out the storm and pick up where we left off when it’s all over.’

Richards looked out at the sun shining in a cloud-free sky. ‘Until the worst happens,’ he said, ‘we’ll keep hoping for the best.’

‘In twenty minutes,’ the chief steward said, ‘we will land in Singapore.’

‘There are no changes in my original arrangements, I trust,’ Porter said.

‘Only a small detail or two,’ the steward replied. ‘Some friends will have a car awaiting you, and will take you to your rendezvous with our representative.’

‘Sorry, chum.’ Porter had anticipated just such a shift, and remained calm. ‘The lady and I are going to a hotel, where a room is being held for us. I have some private matters to set up before I go to the meeting. Matters that will guarantee our safety if and when I’ve made a deal with your people.’

‘But my instructions—’

‘To hell with your instructions.’ Porter did not raise his voice. ‘My original conditions were specific, and Moscow accepted them. For reasons of my own I have no intention of allowing them to be altered. Even the meeting place has been arranged, and I’ll be there four hours to the minute after the wheels of this aeroplane touch the ground. No sooner and no later.’

The man was startled by his resolve, and became nasty. ‘An Anglo-Saxon trait that always mystifies me,’ he said, ‘is how you refuse to recognize long odds.’

‘We’ve had a great deal of practice,’ Porter said cheerfully. ‘We’ve been fighting odds for centuries.’

‘You realize we can compel you—’

‘I realize you can kill Miss Wing and me before we ever hit the ground,’ Porter said. ‘I also realize that Comrade Andropov will never get his hands on certain documents that I’ve travelled halfway around the world to deliver to one of his associates. It may be an old Slavic custom to change rules while a game is in progress, but I don’t happen to play that way. Take it or leave it.’

The man walked forward to the cockpit, muttering to himself.

‘That was dangerous,’ Nancy said.

‘Everything we’ve done since I’ve gone underground has been dangerous.’

‘Were you serious when you said Andropov wouldn’t get the documents you agreed to supply?’

‘The KGB will have to meet my terms,’ Porter said.

She hesitated for an instant. ‘I’ve assumed you’ve actually been carrying them, perhaps on microfilm.’

‘You’ve assumed wrong.’ Porter had no intention of telling her the precautionary arrangements he had made to safeguard the blueprints and other documents concerning’ the dummy jumbo submarine. ‘For your own sake you’ll have to trust me.’

‘Wouldn’t it be safer if I know, too? I mean, suppose something happens to you?’

‘Nothing will happen to me,’ Porter said, ‘as long as I’m the only one who knows the specifications.’

The wheels touched down on the runway, and the girl fell silent.

Porter felt almost certain she had been assigned by the Chinese to obtain the documents from him, and if he was right she would make another attempt before he went off to meet the KGB representative from Moscow. Perhaps the knife thrown at her in Port Moresby had been intended as a warning, and time was running short.

One way and another, the next few hours would be the most crucial of his life.

‘Strike ten,’ the sonar operator called.

His colleagues echoed his cry. All four console dials showed a maximum intensity.

Franklin Richards snapped a switch, and a deep, humming sound came out of a loudspeaker unit on the deck beside him. The noise rose and fell, rose and fell.

Adrienne was reminded of waves.

The speed of the

Neptune

was cut abruptly, and she gradually drew to a halt after drifting for another mile or two, then went into reverse and began to inch backward.

‘Attention all hands and passengers,’ Captain Humphries said from the bridge. ‘We are on target.’

Richards was wasting no time, and picked up a telephone. ‘Demagnetize the ballast,’ he said. ‘Yes, turn on your machines right now, and I’ll join you shortly.’ He glanced at his watch and smiled. ‘We’ll be ready to roll before dawn,’ he said. ‘Just twelve more hours of waiting.’

Adrienne was in a hurry, too, and went to the communications centre, where she gave the signals officer a message that had been prepared before she had left the United States. It was addressed to a ‘Mrs William Smith, care of Commanding General, Clark Field’, and the message itself was innocuous:

The Corporation co-ordinator at Clark Field, the largest US Air Force base on earth located on other than American soil, would know what she meant. The

Neptune

had located the sunken Russian submarine far below the surface of the sea, and frantic preparations were under way for its recovery. The actual operation would begin in twelve hours, as soon as the shot that would be stored in the submersible was demagnetized.

Adrienne went forward to the bridge to congratulate Captain Humphries. Modern navigation, combined with sonar, had enabled him to find the needle-like lost submarine in the vast undersea haystack of the South China Sea.

The master of the Neptune nodded absently as she expressed admiration for his feat. ‘I’ve just had a report from that weather plane,’ he said. ‘The gale is standing still, gathering strength, and sure as hell is unholy she’s turning into a full-fledged typhoon. There’s still no way of telling whether she’s going to come towards us, but I hope Frank Richards’ gadgets do what they’re supposed to do. And without delays.’

A car load of Russian agents followed the taxi from the airport into downtown Singapore, and for all Porter knew or cared, his driver worked for the KGB, too. He had anticipated just such a move, and had made his preparations accordingly.

Nancy was silent in her corner, and appeared to be brooding.

Porter hadn’t visited Singapore for more than a year, and was impressed anew by the remarkable prosperity of the city-state. Her economy in ruins when she had been retaken from her Japanese captors at the end of World War Two, Singapore had broken away from the new nation, Malaysia, determined to go it alone. The odds against her had been overwhelming, but she had succeeded in spite of them, and was the miracle of the Orient.

Her people, a mixture of Malaysians, Chinese, Indians, and Occidentals, had banded together under a stable government, and in spite of the city’s location close to the Equator, had devoted themselves to unremitting hard labour. The results were to be seen everywhere, and the taxi passed scores of new, automated factories and mills, then rolled through streets lined with skyscraper office buildings, banks and hotels. There were virtually no beggars in Singapore now, shantytown slums had given way to comfortable high-rise dwellings, and the pedestrians of every race who dodged in and out of the long lines of motor cars, lorries, pickup trucks and other vehicles looked more prosperous and better fed than the residents of any other community in the East.