Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

‘Go on,’ said Denison. ‘I’m just trying to sort out all these names.’

‘Viipuri was pretty well smashed up during the war, including the laboratory Merikken was working in. So he got the hell out of there and went home to Enso which is about thirty miles north of Viipuri. He knew by this time that no one was going to stop the Russians and he wanted to see to the safety of his papers. He’d done a lot of work before the war which hadn’t been published and he didn’t want to lose it.’

‘So what did he do?’ asked Denison. He was becoming interested.

‘He put all the papers into a metal trunk, sealed it, and buried it in the garden of his house. Young Harri Merikken – that’s our Harry Meyrick – helped him. The next day Hannu Merikken, his wife and his younger son, were killed by the same bomb, and if Harri had been in the house at the same time he’d have been killed, too.’

‘And the papers are important?’ said Denison.

‘They are,’ said Carey soberly. ‘Last year Meyrick was in Sweden and he bumped into a woman who had given him a temporary home when he’d been evacuated from Finland. She said she’d been rummaging about in the attic or whatever and had come across a box he’d left behind. She gave it to him. He opened it in his hotel that night and looked through it. Mostly he was amused by the things he found – the remnants of the enthusiasms of a seventeen-year-old. There were the schematics of a ham radio he’d designed – he was interested in electronics even then – some other drawings of a radio-controlled model aircraft, and things like that. But in the pages of an old radio magazine he found a paper in his father’s handwriting, and that suddenly made the papers buried in Merikken’s garden very important indeed.’

‘What are they about?’ asked Denison.

Carey ignored the question. ‘At first, Meyrick didn’t realize what he’d got hold of and he talked about it to a couple of scientists in Sweden. Then the penny dropped and he bolted back to England and began to talk to the right people – we’re lucky he was big enough to know who to talk to. The people he talked to got interested and, as an end result of a lot of quiet confabulation, I was brought in.’

‘The idea being to go and dig up the garden?’

‘That’s right. The only snag is that the garden is in Russia.’ Carey knocked out his pipe in the ashtray. ‘I have a couple of men scouting the Russian border right now. The idea was that as soon as they report, Meyrick and I would pop across and dig up the papers.’

McCready snapped his fingers. ‘As easy as walking down Piccadilly.’

‘But Meyrick was snatched,’ said Carey. ‘And you were substituted.’

‘Yes,’ said Denison heavily. ‘Why me?’

‘I don’t think we need to go too deeply into that,’ said Carey delicately. He did not want Denison to ruminate about his past life and go off into a fugue. ‘I think it could have been anybody who looked enough like Meyrick to need the least possible surgery.’

There was a whole list of other qualifications – someone who would not be missed too easily, someone who had the right psychological make-up, someone very easily accessible. It had been a job which had been carefully set up in England and back in London there was a team of ten men sifting through the minutiae of Denison’s life in the hope of coming up with a clue to his kidnapping. It was a pity that Denison could not be directly questioned but Harding was dead against it, and Carey had a need for Denison – he did not want an insane man on his hands.

‘Which brings us to the next step,’ said Carey. ‘Someone – call them Crowd X – has pinched Meyrick, but they’re not going to broadcast the fact. They don’t know if we’ve tumbled to the substitution or not – and we’re not going to tell them.’ He looked steadily at Denison. ‘Which is why we need your co-operation, Mr Denison.’

‘In what way?’ asked Denison cautiously.

‘We want you to carry on being Meyrick, and we want you to go to Finland.’

Denison’s jaw dropped. ‘But that’s impossible,’ he said. ‘I’d never get away with it. I can’t speak Finnish.’

‘You’ve got away with it up to now,’ pointed out Carey. ‘You fooled Mrs Hansen and you’re doing very well with Meyrick’s daughter. It’s quite true what Harding said – you’re very competent.’

‘But the language! Meyrick speaks Finnish.’

‘He speaks Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and English fluently and idiomatically,’ said Carey easily. ‘His French passes but his Italian and Spanish aren’t too hot.’

‘Then how the hell can I get away with it?’ demanded Denison. ‘All I have is English and schoolboy French.’

‘Take it easy. Let me tell you a story.’ Carey began to fill his pipe again. ‘At the end of the First World War quite a number of the British troops married French wives and stayed in France. A lot of them were given jobs by the War Graves Commission – looking after the war cemeteries. Twenty years after, there came another war and another British Expeditionary Force. The new young soldiers found that the old soldiers had completely lost their English – their mother tongue – and could speak only French.’

He struck a match. ‘And that’s what’s going to happen to Meyrick. He hasn’t been back to Finland since he was seventeen; I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suppose he’d lose the language.’

‘But why do you want me? I can’t lead you to the papers – only Meyrick can do that.’

Carey said, ‘When this happened my first impulse was to abandon the operation, but then I started to think about it. Firstly, we don’t know that Meyrick was snatched because of this operation – it might have been for a different reason. In that case the papers are reasonably safe. Secondly, it occurred to me that you could be a good distracting influence – we could use you to confuse the opposition as much as they’ve confused us. If you go to Finland as Meyrick they won’t know what the hell to think. In the ensuing brouhaha we might get a chance at the papers. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re crazy,’ said Denison.

Carey shrugged. ‘Mine is a crazy profession – I’ve seen crazier ploys come off. Look at Major Martin – the man who never was.’

‘He didn’t have to stand up to questioning,’ said Denison. ‘The whole thing is bloody ridiculous.’

‘You’d be paid, of course,’ said Carey casually. ‘Well paid, as a matter of fact. You’d also get a compensatory grant for the injuries that have been done to you, and Mr Ireland is ready and willing to bring you back to normality.’

‘Dr Harding, too?’

‘Dr Harding, too,’ confirmed Carey. He wondered to what extent Denison knew his mental processes to be abnormal.

‘Suppose I turn you down,’ said Denison. ‘Do I still get the services of Iredale and Harding?’

McCready tensed, wondering what Carey would say. Carey placidly blew a smoke ring. ‘Of course.’

‘So it’s not a matter of blackmail,’ said Denison.

The unshockable Carey arranged his features in an expression of shock. ‘There is no question of blackmail,’ he said stiffly.

‘Why are Merikken’s papers so important? What’s in them?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Mr Denison,’ said Carey deliberately.

‘Can’t or won’t?’

Carey shrugged. ‘All right, then – won’t.’

‘Then I’m turning you down,’ said Denison.

Carey put down his pipe. ‘This is a question of state security, Denison; and we work on the principle of “need to know”. Mrs Hansen doesn’t need to know. Ian Armstrong doesn’t need to know. You don’t need to know.’

‘I’ve been kidnapped and stabbed,’ said Denison. ‘My face has been altered and my mind has been jiggered with.’ He raised his hand. ‘Oh, I know that – Harding got that much across – and I’m scared to the marrow about thinking of who I once was. Now you’re asking me to go on with this charade, to go to Finland and put myself in danger again.’ His voice was shaking. ‘And when I ask why you have the gall to tell me I don’t need to know.’