The DNI broke in. The Americans are great on code names. We looked for one. When the Little Bear project was under way originally, it went under the code name Brickbat
Zero One-highest priority, top secret, most urgent, the lot. We've kept that-Brickbat Zero One.'
I turned away from technicalities to something close at hand.
And where does Mam'zelle Adele come into all this?' Code and cipher expert,' said the DNI briefly. My best girl. Break anything wide open'
I thought she was an islander..
I am.' She smiled, making a gesture as if to lay her hand on my arm. Adele Dauguet. My father did hold a jouissance at St Brandon, and it covered Love-Apple Crossing. What'
Sir George didn't say was that there's only one landing-place on Love-Apple Crossing and it's called Vingt-Cinq Coups twenty-five lashes.'
Something cold seemed to come into the conversation as she said it.
Love-Apple Crossing was a solitary confinement cell for the Agalega plantations in the slavery days,' she explained. Vingt-Cinq Coups means exactly what it says-twenty-five lashes. You can still see the remains of the flogging grating there.'
Peace was watching her calculatingly, as he had done at dinner. Both she and the DNI sensed his scrutiny.
The DNI said: Adele was one of my girls in London and when this project first blew up, what more perfect cover than a girl from the islands teaching Creole to an old dodderer of a naval officer in retirement!'
She blushed slightly. 'I don't think that's the way the locals look at it.'
It was necessary,' retorted the DNI crisply. ' A whiff of scandal only gave credence to it.'
So,' I said slowly to the DNI, ' you aren't even retired?'
Officially,' he smiled. But the Prime Minister and I remain in close touch.' He turned to Peace. ' I wonder if we couldn't risk taking Maude along too?'
Another woman!' I burst out. '
Adele gave a low laugh. 'MAUD E-short for Morse
Automatic Decoder!'
Peace grinned too. ' I think Maude can stay at home-her power system might give the game away. From what you say, Adele's quite good enough.'
The DNI was conspiratorial. One of my men smuggled the new u.s. Navy code-book to me. We can read anything the U.S. Navy sends.' Peace whistled. Offence punishable w i t h – '
The DNI nodded. Adele's been swotting up on it. MKG also sent me-this!' He took from his pocket what looked like a magnetic tape casset and switched on the radiogram's tape recorder.
I want you both to memorize this,' he said. It's from the u.s. Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Library.'
He turned up the volume. The sound came through foggily a jum-jum-jum noise and then a faint squeak. Then the noise blanked out, giving way to a dissipated crackling, like breaking cream crackers by the thousand; then a faint, irregular hammering. Peace's jaw was tense and his head slightly cocked. Jum-jum-jum-squeak. Crackle. Silence.
Then a low droning hum, like a generator.
Sound signature of a nuclear sub-deep,' said Peace with satisfaction. Not in these waters, though.' Jum-jum-jum squeak.
The DNI gestured. Willowtrack's sound.'
Peace whistled softly. This could be worth almost anything-in the wrong hands.'
I asked, What's the rest of it besides the main noise fish?'
The DNI nodded. The crackle is shrimp. This was recorded off Greenland by-well, let us say, by an unauthorized source.'
Jum-jum-jum-squeak.
Peace said, Why don't they fix that circ pump? It's the biggest giveaway..
You wouldn't believe what heartache that little squeak has caused,' replied the DNI. It's a special seal where the drive-shaft enters the pump. Oddly, there's nothing wrong with it. The nearest the backroom boys have got to it is saying that it is caused by some sort of ultra-sonic vibration. Revs Tyler had this seal in Willowtrack unseal itself a thousand feet beneath the South Pole.'
Peace said grimly, Only Revs could have made it after that.' He turned to me. You'll play act about my death still, but you must, of course, tell Mac. After a couple of days, you'll give out that you're taking Bellatrix back to South Africa for sale, in accordance with my will. You'll let it be known that you're going back via Madagascar. TrevorDavis will come aboard at night. Keep him out of sight when you leave port. Steer, a course for a couple of hundred miles as if you really were heading towards Africa. Then double back and make for St Brandon at your best speed. We'll meet you there, MKG and I'
What about Willowtrack?' I began.
She's due at St Brandon after thirty-six days mainly submerged from Connecticut, and if I know Revs, he'll be there to the hour,' Peace replied. He added, No radio, radar or other transmissions from Bellatrix. Better keep even the receiving radio dead until you're out of range of all the tracking equipment of the missile range.'
You've forgotten Mam'zelle Adele,' said the DNI. ' She goes with you, John.'
My heart lifted and she smiled back at me. Suddenly, despite the extraordinary nature of the project, life felt very good. Johannesburg, NACCAM, high-powered sales talk, all seemed a very long way away.
It was the DNI's cold voice which brought back the dangers, the realities 'of the mission. There is a complex meshing together in Brickbat Zero One of imponderables, all sorts of factors which could ruin the project-or cost someone's life,' he said. MKG might even find himself a victim, rather than a conqueror, of space.' The gentleness of his voice made it
– sound more sinister. ' The missilemen always allow an extra safety margin for the imponderables; I have tried to do the same. They also have a name for it.'
' They call it the Jesus factor,' Peace said.
5 NUCLEAR HIGHWAY
The black whale-backed sail rose sinisterly out of the sea half a cable's length, to port. Her identification numbers had been newly painted out and above the fairwater-I still thought of it as a conning-tower-rose periscope masts, radar and radio antenna. The long shape of the nuclear sub swung and held station on Bellatrix.
It was our second morning at sea, two days after the meeting in the DNI's cottage. I was in the wheelhouse after breakfast. It was a perfect day. Bellatrix, under my command, had cleared the Seychelles Bank and \was making a breathtaking eighteen knots. I could almost hear Mac singing along with the twin Rolls-Royce diesels. Captain Trevor-Davis, the Royal Navy missile expert, was checking the fuel levels below. I had taken an immediate liking to this tall, flaxen-haired Englishman when he had come aboard Bellatrix in Port Victoria the night before we sailed. He said little, yet there was a sense of strong competence about him. I saw why the
DNI had chosen him for the job.
Out to starboard, a white line of foam announced La Perle
Reef. When we had first sighted, Mam'zelle Adele and I, from the weather-deck dinette during breakfast, she had asked me to take her up on the coachroof to see. My heart missed a beat at her unusual loveliness as the north-westerly wind blew her hair into her eyes, and I slipped my arm round her shoulders. For a thousand miles to every point of the compass, Limuria stretched away. From the submerged continent under our keel life had first sprung millions of years ago and now, from its deeps again, a man would try to make a strange, imperishable and wonderful new journey in a vehicle named after the stars. I found myself sharing my thoughts with Adele, but when she looked gravely up into my eyes, the DNI's words hit us both-somewhere was the Jesus factor. Somehow her own presence on board threw that warning into sharper relief. Despite the mild morning, she shuddered with a sense of foreboding. Without a word, she turned and went to her luxury cabin below-decks. I occupied Peace's own weather-deck cabin, which commanded an unimpaired view of the ocean.