Hunter Killer Page 5

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  Excellent! You want to live on those bloody spaceman

  pills inside a steel coffin for days to appreciate what a square meal means. If I'd been one of those blokes who first got up on to the moon, I'd have come back to earth just for a decent meal.' He laughed and added, ' I nearly indulged in an old Limuria remedy—drink a pint of turtle's blood to restore your own.'

  I felt the amused twitch of Mam'zelle Adele's lips was

  meant for me, as she said, I should have kept some of tonight's dinner gravy for you, then, rather than Scotch—it's. turtle steak'

  Peace dropped his gay mood and turned to me. Don't

  look so damned serious, John—the whole thing was a hoax.

  The DNI and I engineered it. I breathed air from Scuba bottles they stacked in the bottom of the coffin. When you

  mourners weren't grieving over the dear departed, I took a

  whiff through my face-mask.'

  I remembered the sharp hiss I had heard while hiding behind the bar. The CIA man had heard it, too. Peace swung on me as if he were reading my thoughts.

  Thanks—for that other business'

  Other business?' The DNI was sharp.

  I pulled out the Colt with the hocked hammer and held it

  in my palm. Peace gave a low whistle. The DNI took it while I explained about the intruder. I realized from his reaction that it was not the intruder who had told him about Mac and the Glenfiddich. Adele's eyes never left my face.

  The DNI and Peace stared at one another. Peace's face was

  bleak, which always spelled trouble for somebody ; the DNI'S impassive, cold.

  The DNI addressed himself to Peace. This puts a different complexion on—a lot of arrangements.'

  How are you sure he was a CIA man?' asked Peace

  abruptly.

  I told them about the three smalls moles' under the armpit. The DNI permitted himself the ghost of a smile. This is the man we want, Geoffrey.'

  I told them about the man's disappearance from the engineroom. Peace pursed his lips. No other identification?'

  ' Nothing except—' I nodded at the weapon—' that.'

  The DNI sniffed the barrel. High-velocity powder. Been fired recently, too. Undoubtedly—' He stopped, looking at Peace for confirmation.

  Hand-load,' he replied. Therefore probably American.

  Bears out what John says about the CIA marks.'

  37

  The tense silence fell again. I had not yet recovered from

  the shock of Peace's return. I remembered the die-cut lettering

  •

  on the coffin '.

  It seems to me far too many people were on the inside of

  this hoax—the C-in-C, for example.'

  Peace became uneasy. What makes you say that, John?'

  I told them about the Cammell-Laird nameplate. The DNI frowned. Too many loose ends, it seems, Geoffrey—especially when a man like John smells a rat. No, the C-in-C was not in our confidence.'

  Nor am I,' I retorted.

  ' Touché,' replied the DNI, inclining his head. ' The coffin was built specially for the job, in England. It was—ahinsinuated in the right place at the right time'

  I looked at the three. It was clear that Mam'zelle Adele

  knew all about it, too. I remembered the strange undertones in the DNI'S voice earlier.

  You're not a couple of schoolboys to play a practical joke

  —let's take it from there,' I snapped.

  Mam'zelle Adele started to withdraw. My dinner is

  spoiling,' she excused herself.

  The DNI did not give me the chance for further questions when, she had gone. He said to Peace, Was the pirogue in

  the right place, Geoffrey? No other leaks? No one in

  sight?'

  We had an island boat waiting in a cove at Recif for me,'

  Peace explained to me. I paddled here under cover of darkness. The coffin had an ejector device. I pulled the chain and it shot me clear. There wasn't anyone around.

  How deep were you?' I asked.

  Sixty, seventy feet.'

  It seemed fishy to me that the C-in-C refused me a ride

  in the helicopter.'

  He had his orders,' replied the DNI in his precise voice. Peace went on, I had to get out tonight. Tomorrow there

  was a chance that someone might have taken a boat o'er the

  grave where our hero was buried. They would have seen

  the coffin half-submerged.

  I took the Colt from the DNI. The owner of this, for example.'

  How much did he suspect?' Peace demanded.

  ' I didn't give him much of a chance. But we both heard

  the hiss of air escaping from the coffin. I don't like the idea of that coffin still floating around.'

  The DNI shook his head. No. It was loaded with two explosive charges, one for Geoffrey's ejector seat, and the 38

  other for a demolition charge. Geoffrey Peace is at the

  bottom of the sea, to the best of everyone's knowledge.'

  Mam'zelle Adele came back. ' Dinner in ten minutes, whether you're changed or not changed.'

  Her arrival broke the tension. Peace and the DNI went off. I stood silent, an avalanche of questions in my mind. Nossi Bé

  rubbed himself softly and affectionately against me.

  Adele said, ,Ànother drink—John?'

  Her eyes were level, unsmiling. I started to say yes, but

  stopped. Peace might drink whisky like that, but not me if I wanted to catch the 'undercurrents—there were plenty—of the DNI's words and Adele's.

  She paused fractionally at my refusal, then picked up the

  elegant lemur and put him on the table. She was relaxed,

  easy. Come, my lovely one,' she said. ' Shake hands with

  our tough fellow-conspirator'

  Nossi Bé extended a jet-black paw. He was as much a

  creature of Limuria as Mam'zelle Adele—strange, lovely, sun-warmed, gentle. The creature's action momentarily stilled the tumult in my mind.

  I scratched his chin. It's sheer magic.'

  The eyes warmed above the high cheek-bones. Magic?'

  Less than a fortnight ago I was sitting in an air-conditioned skyscraper office in Johannesburg,' I replied. My whole world revolved round NACCAM and its affairs. A touch of the button and—'

  She smiled. A man under authority.'

  I sounded a little' unreal to myself.

  And now?' she prompted, when I fell silent.

  Nossi Bé,' I replied. Limuria. Mam'zelle Adele.'

  ' The languid charm of the islands,' she teased. Then that

  odd quality of light round her eyes dimmed. You underrate

  yourself,' she said quietly. I'd add, a man who half-kills another with a karate blow to the throat and is quite prepared to rough up a semi-conscious man to extort information from him. The chosen companion-in-arms of Commander

  Geoffrey Peace.'

  The suddenness of it took me aback. She picked up Nossi

  134, who was grumbling under his breath.

  There are things about you which also don't add up,' I

  said. You're French, for example, yet your English is impeccable.'

  She knelt, putting Nossi Bé on the floor, and looked up into my face. The V of her breasts under the slight cotton sent

  the blood into my ears.

  39

  I act as the DNI'S interpreter,' she replied evenly. He told you so himself. I speak Creole—well.'

  But your English—'

  She shrugged. I went to school in England. I learned my

  trade there.'

  Trade?' I echoed, but she stood. up and turned away.

  There were as many questions I wanted to ask her as I wanted to ask Peace and the DNI. Then, with an odd little gesture, she swung back and slipped her arm through mine and led me in

  to dinner.

  Her dinner was a masterpiece, but my preoc
cupation prevented my enjoying it fully. The varra-varra was served with a beurre vert in tiny flat wicker baskets on a bed of fern-like langue de vache: the turtle steaks were sweated in butter with a thickish sauce of coconut flour flavoured with sherry. The wine was a favourite of Peace's, a superb South African Bellingham Grand CAI served in an ice-bucket' made from the famous double coconut-shells of the Seychelles.

  Mam'zelle Adele sat at the head and the DNI at the foot. I faced Peace. We had just finished the varra-varra and I reached forward for the wine. The Colt fell, like a reminder, on the table. Mam'zelle Adele picked it up and handed it back to me.

  The Colt Python's better,' she remarked. A sort of

  Cadillac among hand-guns.

  I saw Peace stiffen. He stared at her. His eyes were deadly cold and his mouth hard. The DNI caught the look. From that moment the meal seemed to go dead. The DNI's voice became more precise and he talked palaeontology. Peace was withdrawn. My conversation, I felt, fell flat. Mam'zelle Adele alone seemed unaffected, though she must have sensed the tension. She was gay, beautiful in her strange way as Nossi Bé, who jumped on to her chair and curled his long

  tail round her neck in imitation of a fur. A frozen lemon sherbet rounded off the meal. We went back into the big room overlooking the harbour. Mam'zelle Adele brought coffee and cognac. The silence was intense.

  The DNI swirled his Napoleon brandy round in its balloon glass. He said to me, ' You must be asking yourself what this is all about?'

  His glance went over the rim of his glass to Peace, then to Mam'zelle Adele, and back to me. The prim voice was slightly defensive. I had to convince—ah—a number of people that Geoffrey Peace was dead.'

  ' Including John Garland,' I rejoined.

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  He went on, ' " The deep damnation of his taking off " had to be spectacular, something everyone could see for themselves.'

  At least the CIA man had his doubts.'

  Peace stirred in his deep cane chair. I wonder if you didn't overdo the business of the depth-charge mortar?'

  There was that risk,' replied the DNI., But everyone had to see Geoffrey Peace go to his grave.'

  It all looked very real and decorous on TV,' interjected Mam'zelle Adele.

  Was the glass hatch a calculated part of the display?' I asked.

  The DNI nodded. It was armour-plated, of course. Did you see anything publicly in the set-up to make you think it might be a fake?'

  Nothing, except your flippant attitude on Loch Ven- nachar's bridge.'

  He frowned at my tone. You're on the inside of this.' I wasn't then—I'm not sure now.'

  Now,' he went on, having publicly disposed of Geoffrey

  Peace, I bring him back because I—'

  I interrupted him. It strikes me as peculiar the way you keep saying "I". You're retired. You're spending your declining days messing around with reptile fossil and learning Creole.'

  I froze when I saw his eyes. I'm doing neither.'

  He looked at me thoughtfully, calculating. It was the most frightening glance I have ever had directed at me. It struck me that he was assessing how, if he had to kill me, he would have done it. The gentle, slightly weary voice lent high drama to his words. Mam'zelle Adele sat very upright and still. Peace no longer lolled in his chair. Maybe he was, remembering his own excoriation by that same gentle, deadly voice.

  The DNI rose and sat on the arm of his chair. I, of course, have a secret. Geoffrey, of course, has a mission.'

  And some hellish weapon is involved,' I added grimly.

  His smile was wintry. Ultimate—it softens the concept, somehow. A small handful of people share this secret. They include the Prime Minister of England and the President and Vice-President of the United States.'

  I shot a glance at Mam'zelle Adele. The skin was stretched tight across her cheek-bones, as if someone had put hands over her ears and pulled it back. She pushed Nossi Be absently from her knee.

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  There was a long pause. The only sound was the swish of

  the trade wind through the broad leaves of the latanier trees.

  • The DNI placed the tips of his fingers together. In my heightened state of mind I saw the gesture as akin to the crablike pincers of the cannibal centipede of the islands when it throttles its victim. Their rasp was in his voice, too.

  We are going to launch the Vice-President of the United

  States into space.'

  4 L I T T L E B E A R

  Like the curtain suddenly going up on a startling and unfamiliar stage-set, the DNI'S words seemed to bring unreality with them. The room itself now looked unreal to me, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. I felt almost clinically detached from the group—the lovely woman, the silver-haired Intelligence chief, the submarine ace, tough and alert as if he had undergone a resurrection rather than an immersion.

  I repeated the Vice-President's name for want of anything better to say. Marvin K. Green!'

  MKG,' corrected the DNI. Better get used to calling him that. You're to see a good deal of the man shortly.'

  I looked at Peace, for it was with MKG that he had worked on the SNAP nuclear motor project.

  He's a regular guy, as they say,' he replied.

  The DNI's precise voice cut in. ' You and Geoffrey will see him launched safely into space. That is your assignment.'

  Mam'zelle Adele spoke for the first time, more to me than

  to the others. ' I'm part of the assignment, too.'

  I banged down my glass. ! This sounds like science fiction'

  On the contrary,' replied the DNI. There is no fiction. The Prime Minister has guaranteed to the President our full cooperation in launching MKG.'

  MKG had emerged as product and leader of the American technocratic society which had grown up round nuclear science and missilery. He had graduated from the famous Naval Research Laboratory and, as the nation's top scientist, had been picked for the Vice-Presidency. As a result, an aura of glamour had developed round this office, which in the past had been regarded as rather a backwater, consonant with America's lead in the space race and MKG'S not inconsiderable

  part in it. The United States—and the world—had watched

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  the youthful MKG (in his thirties) train as an astronaut and set the seal on his devotion to space exploration by actually making a trial orbit and splash-down. From that moment he

  was the darling of the nation. In brief, MKG personified the rule of science in the space age.

  Peace said, as if following my line of thought, MKG is a Navy man, through and through. He has what the us. Navy

  calls " in-house capability ". But this isn't a simple orbiting job, like he has done before. It's the big thing. MKG will space-liaise and land on Santa Fe.'

  The Americans had christened their principal skyport for Davis and Acton's moon-shot after the great trail of the Old West, which certainly sounded more homey than the official designation: Space Logistics, Maintenance and Rescue

  Spacecraft.

  Without my asking, Mam'zelle Adele took my glass and poured me a stiff shot from the brandy decanter. Peace also splashed more liquor into his rummer. He was very tense. All the world knew that Peace, a nuclear submarine commander and one of the bright stars of Britain's new Navy, had headed the top-flight SNAP team to the United States. After meeting Peace and the British team, MKG had been sold on the SNAP miniature power plant for missiles, and by virtue of his scientific status, had been designated by the President to head the maze of committees handling atomic energy projects. With MKG'S endorsement of SNAP, it looked as though the world was to benefit from a highly-successful AngloAmerican space project. Then Davis and Acton reached the moon in a Sirius, an Air Force liquid-fuelled rocket. The Americans went crazy over Sirius, despite the fact that it was hinted, although not officially admitted, that its failure to return safely to earth had been due to the erratic behaviour of the capsule's solarpowered batteries. The two astronauts had been unabl
e, because of power failures, to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, and had been burned up with their space-ship. The built-in genius of SNAP, averred MKG and Peace, would prevent any similar recurrence in future.

  A bitter controversy had arisen and the British public then became aware of the complicated system of checks and balances which operated in the American atomic programme. They learned that overall control of the atom in the United States was vested in the Atomic Energy Commission, a civilian body of five appointed by the President, but that the budget and legislative side was handled by the Joint Congres43 sional Committee on Atomic Energy, whose eighteen members, divided equally between the Senate and the House, were policy-makers and watchdogs. The Commission also relied '

  On the advice of its own body of nuclear experts. This body, despite pressure by MKG and the President—who was known to favour SNAP—threw out the British project.

  The British public became aware, at the same time, of a

  revival of the old rivalries between the American Services. MKG and SNAP stood for the Navy, Sirius for the Air Force. The Air Force rightly pointed to the successful moon landing and countered the Navy's claims by insisting that SNAP had never been tested in space, whereas Sirius had, and, moreover, SNAP was a non-American motor which should give way to American enterprise.

  Peace had made himself very unpopular in the United

  States because of his outspoken criticism of the dropping of SNAP. His remark that Sirius was no more than a land-based missile of little advanced strategic value had aroused a storm of resentment amongst the American populace, blinded by the success of their two astronauts in reaching the moon first. Peace had returned with the SNAP team to England, licking his wounds, still a target for American criticism.

  Now he and the DNI were talking of launching MKG himself into space. I got to my feet and faced Peace. ' Are you really serious about this incredible idea of shanghai-ing America's top scientist in order to launch him into space to prove the value of SNAP?'

  We are not shanghai-ing him. MKG wants to go'

  I turned to the DNI, but he ignored me and picked up his tiny punch and hammer.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  The DNI prised loose a chip of shale. I should have made it clear. This is not a kidnapping job. It is more than that.'

  If Geoffrey got the publicity works for his so-called funeral, imagine,' I said, what MKG's launching will be like: a round-by-round, second-by-second commentary by every