When he woke in the morning, she was still in his arms and her hair had fallen across his chest. She was sleeping like a child, one arm flung across him and her face rested and at peace. He ran his fingers lightly along her body, his own face relaxed too as his mind went back over the night. Then, glancing at his watch, he disengaged himself gently from her, and leaving her sleeping, got up and went over to the window. He drew the curtains back and looked out on the street, wakening now to a bright sun.
He turned away and glanced back at Virginia; he was thinking once again of the night. She’d asked him, after one embrace, if he was really married or not, or was it only a cover. He’d told her no, he wasn’t and never had been.
Her arms had tightened round his body then and she’d given a little sigh and whispered, “And never want to be, I guess. Not that I’m blaming you. A girl kind of… slows a man up, maybe.” He hadn’t pursued that because what she said was basically true in his case. Men in other jobs often needed a woman — the right woman, and for each man there was only the one right woman — to help and encourage them along. That had never applied to men in his particular game; and he knew she understood that…
He left the room. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water vigorously over his body, shaved with a spare razor of Jones’s, dressed, and then went into the kitchen and rooted about in the cupboards. He found cereal, and milk still fresh in a refrigerator, and eggs. There was freshly-ground coffee in an airtight tin. When the coffee was simmering gently and aromatically in an electric percolator and he was ready to fry the eggs, Shaw went in and woke Virginia.
She yawned and stretched, smiling up at him contentedly. “Do I smell coffee?” she asked.
He said, “You do indeed. Breakfast is almost ready, so show a leg.”
She chuckled. “I’ll show you more than that.” She sat up, let the sheet fall from her breasts, then pushed the covers right away from her body. “Satisfied?”
“It’ll have to do for now.” His eyes caressed her. “I don’t want my cooking efforts wrecked.”
She reached up. “Kiss me.” He did so. “You’re a darling,” she breathed into his ear.
Shaw had laid the meal in the kitchen and fifteen minutes later, while they were finishing, they heard the rattle of the outer door. There was a loud banging and an angry, startled voice snapped, “What the goddam hell!”
Shaw got up, grinning. “That’ll be Jones,” he said. “Stand by for fireworks.” He went out into the hall and pulled back the bolts on the door. Opening up, he came face to face with Jones, who was carrying a bulky leather briefcase. Jones’ mouth was open ready, but when he recognized Shaw, his eyebrows went up high over his heavy spectacles and then his mouth closed like a steel trap. Shaw noted signs of fear, as well as anger, in the man’s face, and he was clearly boiling over with questions and rebukes but being on the doorstep was restraining himself — with difficulty. It was, however, Shaw’s turn to be shaken rigid when Jones, with a show of deference, stepped aside, and another man pushed through the door into the tiny hall. A square, blunt man with a face that shrieked high blood-pressure, with a thick black moustache and dark jowls and bulging eyes, wearing a fawn raincoat with shoulder-capes and a belt and leather buttons, and a greasy brown trilby. Brigadier Treece. Or Mr Treece, if he preferred it that way.
Matters had not been improved when Virginia MacKinlay was discovered in the kitchen drinking a second cup of coffee.
Shaw said pleasantly, “Brigadier Treece… Miss MacKinlay of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Treece seemed to be fighting some internal enemy who threatened to choke him. He snapped, “Have you gone crazy, man?”
“I don’t really think so,” Shaw replied. “I can see you’re surprised—”
“Surprised!”
“—and annoyed. And understandably so. You think I’ve been monumentally indiscreet — but may I just make the point that circumstances do alter cases and I had no alternative but to come along here—”
“And the girl?” Treece asked belligerently.
“And the girl too. I’ll explain everything, if you’ll give me a chance.”
“You’ve got your chance now,” Treece said, glaring. He was in a filthy mood. “Make the most of it.” He chucked his trilby on the table.
Shaw explained. His explanation did in fact appear to pacify Treece, though Jones seemed far from happy about the whole position and appeared to regard his cover as being blown to the skies, his whole elaborate set-up irretrievably wrecked. It was left to Treece, as they all adjourned to the drawing-room, to smooth him over, and when this had been, at any rate, partially achieved Shaw said, “I did manage to pick up one lead, or rather Miss MacKinlay did. I regarded it as being extremely important, I may say, and the best we’re likely to get before it’s too late.”
Treece rubbed briskly at his moustache. “Give.”
Shaw said, “One of the men was heard to mention the uranium workings in the general vicinity of Lake Baikal and the Chalok River.” He paused. “I’ve been hearing a thing or two, as Jones will gather shortly, from Sir Hubert Worth-Butters, about the Chalok River area — and the dam.”
Treece’s attitude seemed to have stiffened and his mouth was drawn very tight. “Go on,” he snapped.
“Well, as I dare say you know by now, Kosy-enko’s also going there — Jones’ll have told you that, of course, if you didn’t know already.” He looked from one to the other. “It begins to smell a trifle strong — don’t you think?”
Jones asked, “Just where is this smell?”
“I’ll tell you. I believe Conroy, whoever he turns out to be and that’s still to be established, means to sabotage the Chalok River dam, and wreck the entire industry of the valley.”
“What!” The explosive sound came from Treece.
Jones said, “Really, that sounds rather extreme, doesn’t it? What do you base your theories on?”
“This.” Shaw’s face was set into hard lines now. “The theory we’ve been working on so far is that all we’re trying to do is to prevent Kosyenko being knocked off by a British subject, but frankly I can’t see that Kosyenko himself is quite all that important. I’m convinced there’s more behind this. And I keep remembering that Conroy was a dam constructor, and so was Kosyenko. Now, to me that suggests a link — tenuous, I agree, but none the less a link. The Chalok dam is part of that link. And remember this, if you need to be reminded of it — all the new factories, all the uranium workings, the whole atomic output of the area… all that lot is at the mercy of the Chalok Dam!”
He caught the look that passed between Jones and Treece; what he had said was dynamite and he knew it — and so did the other two. Shaw could see in their eyes that already, as he had done earlier, they were contemplating the prospect of an all-out nuclear war.
Jones said, “It’s fantastic!”
Shaw shrugged. “Possibly it is, but then so is a lot of what goes on these days. Our job is to make sure fantasy doesn’t become fact, that no one ever knows any of it even looked like happening. And meanwhile I’m damn sure those two characters, Wicks and Fawcett, aren’t here strictly for the pickings of the goldsmuggling racket. They’re deeply committed in the Conroy affair and gold’s just cover. Just bear in mind what I said — in that flat they were talking about the uranium area.”
Treece flicked a glance at Jones before answering. Then he said, “There’s nothing in the files about either of them to support your views. They’re absolutely clean security-wise.” He bit at a fingernail, staring at Shaw. “I think you’ve been informed of that, haven’t you?”