“But there are no families,” the colonel persisted. “Only wives.”
“Perhaps they’re afraid the patter of tiny feet may distract the highly-paid minds.” I shrugged. “Or limited accommodation. Or the kids to follow later. All it says is ‘No accommodation for children’.”
“Nothing in all of this strikes you as being in any way sinister?”
“Superficially, no. With all respects, I question whether it would strike you either, sir. Scores of our best men have been lured overseas in the past years. But if you were to provide me with the information you’re obviously withholding, I might very well begin to see it your way.”
Another momentary tic at the left-hand corner of the mouth, he was really letting himself go today, then he fished out a small dark pipe and started scraping the bowl with a penknife. Without looking up he said: “There was a further coincidence that I should have mentioned. All the scientists who accepted those jobs-and their wives-have disappeared. Completely.”
With the last word he gave me a quick up-from-under glance with those arctic eyes, to see how I was taking it. I don’t much like being played cat-and-mouse with, so I gave him back his wooden Indian stare and asked: “In this country, en route or after arrival?”
“I think maybe you are the right man for the job, Bentall,” he said inconsequently. “All of them left this country. Four seem to have disappeared en route for Australia. From the immigration authorities in New Zealand and Australia we have learned that one landed in Wellington and three others in Sydney. And that’s all they know about them. That’s all any of the authorities in those countries know. They arrived. They vanished. Finish.”
“Any idea why?”
“None. Could be several alternatives. I never waste my time guessing, Bentall. All we know-hence, of course, the very great official anxiety-is that though all the men concerned were engaged in industrial research, their unique knowledge could all too easily be put to military uses.”
“How thorough a search has been made for them, sir?”
“You can imagine. And I’m led to believe that the police forces in the-ah-Antipodes are as efficient as any in the world. But it’s hardly a job for a policeman, eh?”
He leaned back in his chair, puffing dark clouds of foul-smelling smoke into the already over-weighted air and looked at me expectantly. I felt tired, irritable, and I didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. He was waiting for me to be a bright boy. I supposed I’d better oblige.
“What am I going out as? A nuclear physicist?”
He patted the arm of his chair. “I’ll keep this seat warm for you, my boy. It may be yours some day.” It’s not easy for an iceberg to sound jovial, but he almost made it. “No false colours for you, Bentall. You’re going out as precisely what you were in the days–you worked at Hepworth and we discovered your unique gifts in another and slightly less academic field. You’re going out as a specialist in fuel research.” He extracted a slip of paper from another folder and tossed it across to me. “Read all about it. The ninth advertisement. Appeared in the ‘Telegraph’ a fortnight ago.”
I let the paper lie where it had fallen. I didn’t even look at it.
“The second application for a fuel specialist,” I said. “Who answered the first? I should know him.”
“Does that matter, Bentall?” His voice had dropped a few degrees.
“Certainly it matters.” My tone matched his. “Perhaps they-whoever ‘they’ may be-picked on a dud. Perhaps he didn’t know enough. But if it was one of the top boys-well, sir, the implication is pretty clear. Something’s happened to make them need a replacement.”
“It was Dr. Charles Fairfield.”
“Fairfield? My old chief? The second-in-command at Hepworth?”
“Who else?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I knew Fairfield well, a brilliant scientist and a highly-gifted amateur archaeologist. I liked this less and less and my expression should have told Colonel Raine so. But he was examining the ceiling with the minute scrutiny of a man who expected to see it fall down any second.
“And you’re asking me to-” I began.
“That’s what I’m doing,” he interrupted. He sounded suddenly tired, it was impossible not to feel a quick sympathy for the man, for the heavy burden he had to carry. “I’m not ordering, my boy. I’m only asking.” His eyes were still on the ceiling.
I pulled the paper towards me and looked at the red-ringed advertisement. It was almost but not quite the duplicate of one I’d read a few minutes earlier.
“Our friends required an immediate cable answer,” I said slowly. “I suppose they must be getting pushed for time. You answered by cable?”
“In your name and from your home address. I trust you will pardon the liberty,” he murmured drily.
“The Allison and Holden Engineering Company, Sydney,” I went on. “A genuine and respected firm, of course?”
“Of course. We checked. And the name is that of their personnel manager and an airmail letter that arrived four days ago confirming the appointment was on the genuine letterhead of the firm. Signed in the name of the personnel manager. Only it wasn’t his signature.”
“What else do you know, sir?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. Absolutely nothing. I wish to God I could help more.”
There was a brief silence. Then I pushed the paper back to him and said: “Haven’t you rather overlooked the fact that this advert is like the rest-it calls for a married man?”
“I never overlook the obvious,” he said flatly.
I stared at him. “You never-” I broke off, then continued: “I suppose you’ve got the banns already called and the bride waiting at the church.”
“I’ve done better than that.” Again the faint tic in the cheek. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a nine by four buff envelope and tossed it across to me. “Take care of that, Bentall. Your marriage certificate. Caxton Hall, ten weeks ago. You may examine it if you wish but I think you’ll find everything perfectly in order.”
“I’m sure I will,” I muttered mechanically. “I should hate to be a party to anything illegal.”
“And now,” he said briskly, “you would, of course, like to meet your wife.” He lifted a phone and said: “Ask Mrs. Bentall to come here, please.”
His pipe had gone out and he’d resumed the excavations with the pen-knife, examining the bowl with great care. There was nothing for me to examine so I let my eye wander until I saw again the light-coloured panel in the wood facing me. I knew the story behind that. Less than nine months ago, shortly after Colonel Raine’s predecessor had been killed in an air crash, another man had sat in the chair I was sitting in now. It had been one of Raine’s own men, but what Raine had not known was that that man had been subverted in Central Europe and persuaded to act as a double agent. His first task-which would also probably have been his last- was simple and staggering in its audacity: nothing less than the murder of Raine himself. Had it been successful, the removal of Colonel Raine-I never knew his real name- chief of security and the receptacle of a thousand secrets, would have been an irreparable loss. The colonel had suspected nothing of this until the agent had pulled out his gun. But what the agent did not know-what nobody had known before then-was that Colonel Raine kept a silenced Luger with the safety catch permanently off fastened to the underside of his chair by a spring clip. I did think he might have had a better job made of repairing that splintered panel in the front of his desk.
Colonel Raine had had no option, of course. But even had he had the chance of disarming or just wounding the man, he would probably still have killed him. He was, without exception, the most utterly ruthless man I had ever met. Not cruel, just ruthless. The end justified the means and if the end were important enough there were no sacrifices he would not make to achieve it. That was why he was sitting in that chair. But when ruthlessness became inhumanity, I felt it was time to protest.
I said: “Are you seriously considering sending this woman out with me, sir?”
“I’m not considering it.” He peered into the bowl of his pipe with all the absorbed concentration of a geologist scanning the depths of an extinct volcano. “The decision is made.”
My blood pressure went up a couple of points.
“Even though you must know that whatever happened to Dr. Fairfield probably happened to his wife, too?”
He laid pipe and knife on the desk and gave me what he probably imagined was a quizzical look: with those eyes of his it felt more as if a couple of stilettos were coming my way.