For a moment they lay there and then both men scrambled to their feet grinning widely. “In other cir-cumstances, and had the blows been delivered with full force, my assistant would now be dead,” Yoshiyama said simply.
Adams picked up a towel, started to wipe sweat from his face and caught sight of Mallory in the gallery. He nodded briefly, said something to Yoshiyama and moved across to the door. Mallory met him in the corridor outside.
“What are you trying to do, go out in a blaze of glory?”
Adams grinned. “Every so often I get so sick of the sight of that damned desk that I could blow my top. Yoshiyama pro-vides a most efficient safety-valve.” He ran a hand over hisright hip and winced slightly. “That last fall hurt like hell. I must be getting old.”
As they mounted the stairs at the end of the corridor, Mallory thought about Adams. One of the best agents the department had ever had; all the guts in the world and a mind like a steel trap until the night he’d got too close for someone’s comfort and they’d tied a Mills bomb to the handle of his hotel bedroom in Cairo.
And now he was a desk man, running 63, the intelligence section that was the pulse-beat of the whole organisation. Some people would have said he was lucky, but not Adams.
He opened a door and walked through a small, neat office. A middle-aged, desiccated-looking spinster with neat grey hair and rimless spectacles sat behind the typewriter. She glanced up, an expression of disapproval on her face, and Adams grinned.
“Don’t say it, Milly. Just tell them I’m ready.”
He led the way into his own office. Like Sir Charles’s, it commanded a fine view of the river, the desk standing by the window. He opened a cupboard, took out a heavy bathrobe and pulled it on.
“Sorry about the delay. I thought Sir Charles would keep you for an hour at least.”
“More like fifteen minutes,” Mallory said. “He always goes straight to the heart of things with the sticky ones.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Adams said. “Interesting more than anything else. Whole thing could be just a storm in a teacup. Let’s go into the projection room.”
He opened the far door and they descended a few steps into a small hall. There were several rows of comfortable seats and a large screen. The place was quite deserted. They sat down and Mallory offered Adams a cigarette.
“Any gaps in this one?”
Adams exhaled with a sigh of pleasure and shook his head. 1 don’t think so. Nothing important, anyway. Has the old man told you much?”
“He’s outlined the job, told me who the principals are. No more than that.”
“Let’s get started, then.” Adams turned and glanced up at the projection box where a dim light showed. “Ready when you are.”
A section of film started to run a few moments later. It showed a submarine entering port slowly, her crew lining the deck.
“To start with5that’s what all the fuss is about,” Adams said.”L’Alouette. Taken at Oran a couple of years ago.”
“She looks rather small. There can’t be more than a dozen men on deck.”
“Originally a German U-boat. Type XXIII. Just over a hundred feet long. Does about twelve kilometres submerged. Crew of sixteen.”
“What about armament?”
“Two twenty-one-inch torpedoes in the bow and she doesn’t carry spares.”
Doesn’t leave much room for mistakes.”
Adams nodded. “They never really amounted to anything. This one was built at Deutsches Werft in 1945 and sunk with all hands in the Baltic. She was raised in ’46, refitted and handed over to the French.”
The film ended and a slide appeared. It showed a young French naval officer, eyes serious beneath the uniform cap, the rather boyish face schooled to gravity.
“Henri Fenelon, full lieutenant. He’s her commander. Age twenty-six, unmarried. Born in Nantes. Father still lives there. Runs a small wine-exporting business.”
Mallory studied the face for a moment or two. “Looks weak to me. Ever been in action?”
Adams shook his head. “Why do you ask?”
Mallory shrugged. “He looks as if he could crack easily. What’s his political background?”