Desmond Bagley - The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

He did not see the door open, nor did he feel himself being lifted up and carried out.

He awoke to darkness.

For a long time he just lay there, unable to think because of the throbbing pain in his head. Then his head cleared a little and he stirred and knew he was lying on a bed. When he moved he heard a metallic clinking noise. He moved again and became aware that he was naked, and a recollection of the sauna came back.

His first thought was that he had collapsed of heat prostration and had been taken to his own room, but when he lifted his hand that theory disintegrated quickly. There was a tug on both wrists and he felt cold metal, and when he twisted his hands around he heard that clinking sound again and felt the handcuffs.

He lay quiet for a while before he levered himself up on one elbow to stare into the blackness, then he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. Tentatively he moved his feet apart; at least they were not manacled and he could walk. But walk where? He held his arms out before him and moved them sideways, first to the left and then to the right, until he encountered an object. It was flat with square edges and he concluded it was a bedside table. Exploring the top brought no joy; there was nothing on it.

Although his headache had eased he felt as weak as a kitten and he sat for a few moments to conserve his strength. Whether his weakness was a natural result of the heat of the sauna was debatable. He reasoned that if the sauna did that to everyone then it would not be so popular in Finland. Apart from that, he had no idea of how long he had been unconscious. He felt his skin and found it cool and with no moisture.

After a while he stood up with his arms out in front of him and began to shuffle forward. He had gone only a few feet when he stubbed his toe on something and the pain was agonizing. ‘Damn!’ he said viciously, and stepped back until he felt the bed behind his legs. He sat down and nursed his foot.

A sound came from the other side of the room and he saw a patch of greyness, quickly obscured and vanishing. A light suddenly stabbed at him and he blinked and screwed up his eyes against the sudden glare. A voice said in accented English, ‘So Dr Meyrick is awake – and up, too.’

Denison brought up his hands before his eyes. The voice said sharply, ‘Don’t move, Meyrick. Stay on the bed.’ Then, more coolly, ‘Do you know what this is?’

The lamp dipped a little so that he could see the vague outline of a man in back-reflected light. He saw the glint of metal in an out-thrust hand. ‘Well?’ said the voice impatiently. ‘What is it, Meyrick?’

Denison’s voice was hoarse. ‘A pistol.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to know what the hell this is all about.’

The voice was amused. ‘No doubt you would.’ As Denison tried to sort out the accent the light played over him. ‘I see you’ve hurt your side, Dr Meyrick. How did that happen?’

‘A pack of maniacs attacked me in Norway. They seem to have the same breed in Finland, too.’

‘Poor Dr Meyrick,’ mocked the voice. ‘You seem to be continually in trouble. Did you report it to the police?’

‘Of course I did. What else would you expect me to do? And to the British Embassy in Oslo.’ He remembered what Carey had said about Meyrick’s bloody-mindedness, and added irascibly, ‘Bloody incompetents – the lot of them.’

‘Who did you see at the Embassy?’

‘A man called McCready picked me up at the police station and took me to the Embassy. Look, I’ve had enough of this. I’m answering no more questions. None at all.’

The pistol moved languidly. ‘Yes, you will. Did you meet Carey?’

‘No.’

‘You’re a liar.’

‘If you think you know the answers, why ask me the questions? I don’t know anyone called Carey.’

A sigh came out of the darkness. ‘Meyrick, I think you ought to know that we have your daughter.’

Denison tensed, but sat quietly. After a moment he said, ‘Prove it.’

‘Nothing easier.’ The pistol withdrew slowly. ‘Tape recorders are made conveniently small these days, are they not?’ There was a click and a slight hissing noise in the darkness beyond the flashlight, then a man spoke:

‘Now tell me; what’s your father doing here in Finland?’

‘He’s on holiday.’

That was Lyn’s clear voice. Denison recognized it in spite of the slight distortion which was far less than that of a telephone.

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Who else would tell me?’ She sounded amused.

‘But he went to see Professor Kääriänen this afternoon. That sounds more like business than pleasure.’

‘He wanted to find out something about his father – my grandfather.’

‘What did he want to find out?’

There was a raw silence, then the man said, ‘Come now, Miss Meyrick; nothing will happen, either to you or to your father, if you answer my questions. I assure you that you will be released unharmed.’

A switch snapped and the voices stopped. From the darkness: ‘You see, Dr Meyrick! Of course, I cannot guarantee the truthfulness of my friend regarding his last statement.’ The pistol reappeared, glinting in the light. ‘Now, to return to Mr Carey – what did he have to say?’

‘He hauled me over the coals for being in a road accident,’ said Denison.

The voice sharpened. ‘You can do better than that. Now, having put you and Carey together, I want to know just what you’re doing here in Finland. I want it truthfully, and I want it quickly. And you’d better start thinking seriously of your daughter’s health.’ The gun jerked. ‘Talk!’

Denison was never more conscious of the disadvantages of being naked; it took the pith out of a man. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’re here to see the Finnish government.’

‘What about?’

‘A defence project.’

‘Who in the government?’

‘Not really the government,’ said Denison inventively. ‘Someone in the army – in military intelligence.’

‘The name?’ When Denison was silent the gun jerked impatiently. ‘The name, Meyrick.’

Denison was hastily trying to slap together a name that sounded even remotely Finnish. ‘Saarinen.’

‘He’s an architect.’

‘Not this one – this one’s a colonel,’ said Denison, hoping it was a rank in the Finnish army. He was listening intently but heard no sound other than an occasional rustle of clothing from the other side of the bright light.

‘What’s the project?’

‘Electronic espionage – equipment for monitoring Russian broadcasts, especially on military wavelengths.’

There was a long silence. ‘I suppose you know that this is already done.’

‘Not the way I do it,’ said Denison.

‘All right; how do you do it? And let’s not have me extract answers like pulling teeth or that girl of yours might have some of her teeth pulled.’

‘I invented an automatic decoder,’ said Denison. A barrier broke in his mind and a wave of panic and terror swept over him. He felt sweat trickle down his chest and then deliberately pushed the panic back where it had come from – but he retained the words that had come with it.

‘It’s a stochastic process,’ he said, not even knowing what the word meant. ‘A development of the Monte Carlo method. The Russian output is repeatedly sampled and put through a series of transformations at random. Each transformation is compared with a store held in a computer memory – if a match is made a tree branching takes place leading to a further set of transformations. There are a lot of dead ends and it needs a big, fast computer – very powerful.’