“She could go up this minute for all anyone knows for absolute certain, sir,” the technician said simply, “but I don’t think that’s likely! I think we can rely on those indicators.”
Shaw drew a deep breath. “I hope to God you’re right,” he said heavily.
He knew he hadn’t much time now. Ackroyd and that missing part — if it really was missing, and Shaw felt that that technician was right — had to be found before the red mark was reached, before the H-bomb power-unit reacted to the AGL Six, before that light brightened to a beam of death…
After that Shaw’s policeman guide took him down towards the eastern end of the main tunnel and then past a Security Police guard into a recently blasted footway leading to a cavern which had been christened Admiralty Cave, and which when completed was to be the fuelling base for the nuclear-powered submarines. This footway sloped fairly sharply downward. No steps had yet been cut into it, and descending to the cavern itself was an eerie and rather frightening experience, a groping forward in torchlight down a damp and slithery rock slope so low overhead that Shaw had to bend all the way along, with the torch glinting on still water, deep and dark ahead of them. Admiralty Cave was an enormous underground harbour, with a long channel leading out to the main berths beyond which could be seen, faintly, quite a small entrance open to the sea. Narrow rock ledges ran round the sides of the water, ledges which would in time become the fuelling wharves. The cavern had, of course, existed before blasting operations started; but its extension was an almost incredible feat of excavating skill, and Shaw, walking through to the main berths, could visualize easily enough what this vast place would be like when the atomic submarine base was fully established. There would be, he estimated, room to berth at one and the same time over a hundred big underwater missile-firing craft, with all their ancillaries in the way of stores and offices, rearming and repair yards. He found Project Sinker coming breathtakingly alive now.
When they were coming back up the footway Shaw told his guide that he wanted to have a look at Sandy Bay; walking right along the main tunnel, he went out into the open, down to the beach, looked for a moment thoughtfully at the water where Ackroyd had gone to swim, examined the beach itself in case anything had been dropped or any clues left; failing to find anything, he turned back and they went straight through westward into the dockyard. Soon after Shaw was in the mortuary looking at the corpse which had been found that morning above Europa Point, at the southern tip of the Rock. Somebody, he thought, had done a good job on it. The head was missing, the trunk gaped wide open. Shaw fancied there was already the sickly-sweet smell of decay. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Karina was responsible for this — the man whose body this had been had probably been pushed off Windmill Hill after it was already dead. The body was, as Staunton had said, totally unrecognizable, and only those papers (apart, apparently, from a general similarity of build) had provided any means of identification. Unreliable evidence — the papers were more than likely phoney — Karina wouldn’t kill a useful man like Ackroyd, not so early in the game.
After his official meeting with the brass, Staunton took Shaw along for a private talk with the Governor in The Convent, the historic old building in Main Street used as His Excellency’s official residence. They found General Hammersley, a very worried man, striding up and down in his office; Shaw knew that this distinguished soldier — who could now be the last in a long line of Governors of Gibraltar — faced the biggest crisis in the Rock’s long fortress-story.
Hammersley’s eyes, oddly gentle though clear and penetrating, were summing Shaw up. He said, “Well, Shaw, I believe you do realize the extent of this thing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Total extinction. The place reduced to radioactive rubble,” said Hammersley quietly. His voice shook, just a little. “One of England’s oldest bases” He broke off abruptly, and Shaw could see the emotion in his face. Shaw thought again of those place-names that signposted Gibraltar’s past: Rosia Parade, Ragged Staff, O’Hara’s Battery, Prince Edward’s Gate.
After that Sir Francis Hammersley — a square man with a pugnacious, firm-chinned face and a small, sandy moustache — came straight to the point, and Shaw gathered that the question of immediate evacuation was very much in his mind. There were, Hammersley said, two avenues of total evacuation: one, a large-scale combined air-sea lift involving the wholesale diversion of shipping and aircraft to the Rock; two, an evacuation by land across the Spanish frontier which Whitehall contended wasn’t ‘on’ at all except as a last desperate resort — and that only if the Spanish authorities agreed, which, considering their attitude towards British retention of Gibraltar, was unlikely. And, said Hammersley, London was trying at all costs to avoid any evacuation whatever— without exactly committing themselves to a direct refusal. Which meant, in effect, that the whole onus was being thrown on Hammersley.
“Which,” he said, with a tired smile, “is what we unfortunates who have to govern the Commonwealth learn to expect anyway.”
Hammersley, thought Shaw, looked the kind of man who could take the responsibility, enormous though it was, and cruel too; he was clearly an example of the right man in the right place at the right time. Sir Francis said heavily, “I’ve been almost constantly on the scramble line to Whitehall in the last few hours, and during the meeting to-night I was called up by your chief, Shaw. He tells me you’re the man-on-the-spot with the background hush-hush knowledge and so forth, and he suggests I take your advice. Well, I just thought I’d have a look at you!” He laughed briefly. “I’ve had that look, and I’m quite satisfied. I’ll just tell you this— I won’t say it again, but you can rely upon it — I’m prepared to listen to what you say, and if I take your advice I’ll assume full responsibility afterwards. So just speak your mind, my boy. Right?”
“Yes, sir,” said Shaw gratefully. He thought for a moment, marshalling his arguments. “Well — the first thing is this: I think London’s absolutely right not to want a general evacuation yet — that is, before we’ve had a chance to deal with the trouble. This thing’s too important. Obviously, this Project Sinker can’t be kept a dead secret once it’s fully operational, but every day during which it can be kept secret is a day gained, as it were, in the East-West balance — and you’ll probably agree that time counts in the cold war racket. It’s vital that nothing should come out yet, especially about the fuel-production unit — that’s the main thing. Any big move like an evacuation would bust security wide open in five minutes. You very likely wouldn’t be able physically to shift the whole population without the most frightful shindy, sir — I seem to remember in the 1940 evacuation a lot of them had to be moved by force, and that wasn’t by any means a total evacuation.” Shaw leaned forward earnestly. “There’s just one way to handle this, sir, if I may say so, and that’s to concentrate on getting hold of Ackroyd.”
“You don’t believe that body was Ackroyd’s, then?”
“No, sir, I don’t.” Shaw gave his reasons for this belief, and Staunton grunted his agreement.
Staunton said, “I’m perfectly certain it’s not, sir. I may be working only on hunches, but I’m sure that’s not Ackroyd. I’d bet any money. He wouldn’t be likely to go and do himself in just when he was going to achieve his ambition — and there’s no murder motive. It could be accidental — he could have fallen off Windmill Hill, I suppose, but the injuries don’t bear that out. And as Shaw says, if anyone was after what he knew — well, sir, is it likely they’d kill him?”