‘I’ll never live to collect my pension. But maybe you’d better have that gun.’
The Firecrest was just over three years old. The Southampton boatyard and marine-radio firm that had combined to build her had done so under conditions of sworn secrecy to a design provided by Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur had not designed her himself although he had never said so to the few people who knew of the existence of the boat. He’d pinched the idea from a Japanese-designed Indonesian-owned fishing craft that had been picked up with engine failure off the Malaysian coast. Only one engine had failed though two were installed, but still she had been not under command, an odd circumstance that had led the alert Engineer Lieutenant on the frigate that had picked her up to look pretty closely at her: the net result of his investigation, apart from giving this splendid inspiration to Uncle Arthur, was that the crew still languished in a Singapore prisoner of war camp.
The Firecrest’s career had been chequered and inglorious. She had cruised around the Eastern Baltic for some time, without achieving anything, until the authorities in Memel and Leningrad, getting tired of the sight of her, had declared the Firecrest persona non grata and sent her back to England. Uncle Arthur had been furious, especially as he had to account to a parsimonious Under-Secretary for the considerable expense involved. The Waterguard had tried their hand with it at catching smugglers and returned it without thanks. No smugglers. Now for the first time ever it was going to justify its existence and in other circumstances Uncle Arthur would have been delighted. When he heard what I had to tell him he would have no difficulty in restraining his joy.
What made the Firecrest unique was that while she had two screws and two propeller shafts, she had only one engine. Two engine casings, but only one engine, even although that one engine was a special job fitted with an underwater bypass exhaust valve. A simple matter of disengaging the fuel pump coupling and unscrewing four bolts on top – the rest were dummies – enabled the entire head of the diesel starboard engine to be lifted clear away, together with the fuel lines and injectors. With the assistance of the seventy foot telescopic radio mast housed inside our aluminium foremast, the huge gleaming transmitter that took up eighty per cent of the space inside the starboard engine casing could have sent a signal to the moon, if need be: as Thomas had observed, we had power and to spare. As it happened I didn’t want to send a signal to the moon, just to Uncle Arthur’s combinex office and home in Knightsbridge.
The other twenty per cent of space was taken up with a motley collection of material that even the Assistant Commissioner in New Scotland Yard wouldn’t have regarded without a thoughtful expression on his face. There were some packages of pre-fabricated explosives with amatol, primer and chemical detonator combined in one neat unit with a miniature timing device that ranged from five seconds to five minutes, complete with sucker clamps. There was a fine range of burglar’s house-breaking tools, bunches of skeleton keys, several highly sophisticated listening devices, including one that could be shot from a Very-type pistol, several tubes of various harmless-looking tablets which were alleged, when dropped in some unsuspecting character’s drink, to induce unconsciousness for varying periods, four pistols and a box of ammunition. Anyone who was going to use that lot in one operation was in for a busy time indeed. Two of the pistols were Lugers, two were 4.25 German Lilliputs, the smallest really effective automatic pistol on the market. The Lilliput had the great advantage that it could be concealed practically anywhere on your person, even upside down in a spring-loaded clip in your lower left sleeve – if, that was, you didn’t get your suits cut in Carnaby Street.
Hunslett lifted one of the Lugers from its clamp, checked the loading indicator and left at once. It wasn’t that he was imagining that he could already hear stealthy footsteps on the upper deck, he just didn’t want to be around when Uncle Arthur came on the air. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t really want to be around then either.
I pulled out the two insulated rubber cables, fitted the powerfully spring-loaded saw-toothed metal clamps on to the battery terminals, hung on a pair of earphones, turned on the set, pulled another switch that actuated the call-up and waited. I didn’t have to tune in, the transmitter was permanently pre-set, and pre-set on a V.H.F. frequency that would have cost the licence of any ham operator who dared wander anywhere near it for transmission purposes.
The red receiver warning light came on. I reached down and adjusted the magic eye control until the green fans met in the middle.
‘This is station SPFX,’ a voice came. ‘Station SPFX.’
‘Good morning. This is Caroline. May I speak to the manager, please?’
‘Will you wait, please?’ This meant that Uncle Arthur was in bed. Uncle Arthur was never at his best on rising. Three minutes passed and the earphones came to life again.
‘Good morning, Caroline. This is Annabelle.’
‘Good morning. Location 481, 281.’ You wouldn’t find those references in any Ordnance Survey Map, there weren’t a dozen maps in existence with them. But Uncle Arthur had one. And so had I.
There was a pause, then: ‘I have you, Caroline. Proceed.’
‘I located the missing vessel this afternoon. Four or five miles north-west of here. I went on board to-night.’
‘You did what, Caroline?’
‘Went on board. The old crew has gone home. There’s a new crew aboard. A smaller crew.’
‘You located Betty and Dorothy?’ Despite the fact that we both had scramblers fitted to our radio phones, making intelligible eavesdropping impossible, Uncle Arthur always insisted that we spoke in a roundabout riddle fashion and used code names for his employees and himself. Girls’ names for our surnames, initials to match. An irritating foible, but one that we had to observe. He was Annabelle, I was Caroline, Baker was Betty, Delmont, Dorothy and Hunslett, Harriet. It sounded like a series of Caribbean hurricane warnings.
‘I found them.’ I took a deep breath. ‘They won’t be coming home again, Annabelle.’
‘They won’t be coming home again,’ he repeated mechanically. He was silent for so long that I began to think that he had gone off the air. Then he came again, his voice empty, remote. ‘I warned you of this, Caroline.’
‘Yes, Annabelle, you warned me of this.’
‘And the vessel?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know. Just gone. North, I suppose.’
‘North, you suppose.’ Uncle Arthur never raised his voice, when he went on it was as calm and impersonal as ever, but the sudden disregard of his own rules about circumlocution betrayed the savage anger in his mind. ‘North where? Iceland? A Norwegian fjord? To effect a trans-shipment of cargo anywhere in a million square miles between the mid-Atlantic and the Barents Sea? And you lost her. After all the time, the trouble, the planning, the expense, you’ve lost her!’ He might have spared me that bit about the planning, it had been mine all the way. ‘And Betty and Dorothy.’ The last words showed he’d taken control of himself again.
‘Yes, Annabelle, I’ve lost her.’ I could feel the slow anger in myself. ‘And there’s worse than that, if you want to listen to it.’
‘I’m listening.’
I told him the rest and at the end of it he said: ‘I see. You’ve lost the vessel. You’ve lost Betty and Dorothy. And now our friends know about you, the one vital element of secrecy is gone for ever and every usefulness and effectiveness you might ever have had is completely negated.’ A pause. ‘I shall expect you in my office at nine p.m. to-night. Instruct Harriet to take the boat back to base.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The hell with his Annabelle. ‘I had expected that. I’ve failed. I’ve let you down. I’m being pulled off.’
‘Nine o’clock to-night, Caroline. I’ll be waiting.’