‘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.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Carey.
‘I don’t care how sorry you are. You can book me on a flight to London.’
‘Now who is using blackmail?’ said Carey ironically.
‘It’s a reasonable request,’ said McCready.
‘I know it is, damn it!’ Carey looked at Denison with cold eyes. ‘If you breathe a word of what I’m going to tell you you’ll be behind bars for the rest of your life. I’ll see to that personally. Understand?’
Denison nodded. ‘I’ve still got to know,’ he said stubbornly.
Carey forced the words through reluctant lips. He said slowly, ‘It seems that in 1937 or 1938 Hannu Merikken discovered a way of reflecting X-rays.’
Denison looked at him blankly. ‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all,’ said Carey curtly. He stood up and stretched. ‘It isn’t enough,’ said Denison. ‘What’s so bloody important about that?’
‘You’ve been told what you want to know. Be satisfied.’
‘It isn’t enough. I must know the significance.’
Carey sighed. ‘All right, George; tell him.’
‘I felt like that at first,’ said McCready. ‘Like you, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Merikken was doing a bit of pure research when he came across this effect before the war and in those days there wasn’t much use for it. All the uses of X-rays depended upon their penetrative power and who’d want to reflect them. So Merikken filed it away as curious but useless and he didn’t publish a paper on it.’
He grinned. ‘The joke is that now every defence laboratory in the world is working out how to reflect X-rays, but no one has figured out a way to do it.’
‘What happened to make it important?’ asked Denison.
‘The laser happened,’ said Carey in a voice of iron.
‘Do you know how a laser works?’ When Denison shook his head, McCready said, ‘Let’s have a look at the very first laser as it was invented in 1960. It was a rod of synthetic ruby about four inches long and less than half an inch in diameter. One end was silvered to form a reflective surface, and the other end was half-silvered. Coiled around the rod was a spiral gas discharge lamp something like the flash used in photography. Got that?’
‘All clear so far.’
‘There’s a lot more power in these electronic flashes than people imagine,’ said McCready. ‘For instance, an ordinary flash, as used by a professional photographer, develops about 4,000 horse power in the brief fraction of a second when the condensers discharge. The flash used in the early lasers was more powerful than that – let’s call it 20,000 horse power. When the flash is used the light enters the ruby rod and something peculiar happens; the light goes up and down the rod, reflected from the silvered ends, and all the light photons are brought in step with each other. The boffins call that coherent light, unlike ordinary light where all the photons are out of step.
‘Now, because the photons are in step the light pressure builds up. If you can imagine a crowd of men trying to batter down a door, they’re more likely to succeed if they charge at once than if they try singly. The photons are all charging at once and they burst out of the half-silvered end of the rod as a pulse of light – and that light pulse has nearly all the 20,000 horse power of energy that was put into the rod.’
McCready grinned. ‘The boffins had great fun with that. They discovered that it was possible to drill a hole through a razor blade at a range of six feet. At one time it was suggested that the power of a laser should be measured in Gillettes.’
‘Stick to the point,’ said Carey irritably.
‘The military possibilities