They were left in peace rather longer than Shaw had dared to expect.
At lunch Debonnair watched Shaw eating and there was a glint of secret and tender amusement in her eyes as she did so. Esmonde, ‘doing’ for himself in this bachelor-bare flat, was just the funniest thing… sometimes… perhaps after all she wouldn’t wait till he’d left the game before she agreed to marry him, and then he would have a better time of it between assignments. If she had more guts, she told herself, she could make things so much more easy for him, but she still felt it wasn’t right to marry and bring children into the world when they could so easily and so suddenly be left fatherless. Esmonde’s job was too dangerous, the risks too frequent and too severe, the whole existence of an agent too chancy. But she knew that if anything happened to Shaw on this job she would never forgive herself for not having taken that chance.
After lunch Shaw went to bed. But not to sleep. His mind was too full of the job ahead for that, and he had no illusions as to the dangers even though the thing was so vague. Several men had died already in connexion with Donovan’s titbit of news; and even in this game people didn’t die unless the news they had was pretty hot and couldn’t be allowed to spread. And there was this implied threat to the New South Wales.
How many families all over the British Isles would be affected if that great ship should suffer? Shaw felt a shiver running along his spine. Suddenly he was filled with a nostalgic yearning for the ordinary life, the life that was so far removed from the artificial existence that had been forced on him by the stomach condition which, so far back in the war days, had rendered him as a young midshipman unfit for sea service and had led him, because of a first-class brain and an essential quality of imagination, into Naval Intelligence. That life was so far removed from the ordinary that he and the people he saw in tubes and buses and in the streets might be in separate, watertight compartments. His was the way of life which involved the sudden shot in the darkness, the killings which he detested, the constant strain and the suspense under which he lived sometimes for weeks on end, the being away from all he held dear, from the little joys of life which were never missed until they were no longer to be had for the asking. He shivered again, but he knew enough about his own make-up to realize that his thoughts were only taking their normal turn, that he’d been cool enough when the trouble started the night before, that he would be cool again once he’d got his teeth into this assignment properly. It was the waiting period that was the worst, the time when his imagination strayed and remembrance came back to him of what he’d had to do in the past, the time when the ghosts walked again.
He fell into a light doze eventually, but he had half an ear waiting for the telephone. Later he got up for a supper of scrambled eggs and coffee. Steaming breakfast cups of coffee, with a small nip of whisky laced into Shaw’s cup. Debonnair on a low leather pouf that he’d brought back once from Morocco, knees drawn up to her chin to reveal a seductive frill of pink underslip beneath the tight skirt, her eyes steady but sad in a tawny, freckled-dusted face; and Judith Donovan, looking a little more composed now and with something of an air of determination about her mouth, in an armchair.
Shaw looked at the girl cursorily, wondered what that self-contained resolve meant. Then his hand reached out, gently touched Debonnair’s. It was cosy in the room, and intimate, and relaxed. But as the time passed Debonnair’s nerves tautened like violin strings, and she got a prickling feeling all over when the telephone finally rang, just as Shaw was lighting a cigarette.
The strident jangle of the bell made Shaw too jump a little. He put down his cigarette in an ashtray and took up the receiver. He said, “Shaw here.”
The voice came abrupt, sharply metallic. It was Latymer himself. “Action Stations, my boy. Come along at once.
Thompson’ll be with you any minute now if he’s not there already. He’ll bring you along with your gear.”
The line clicked off, and it was only half a minute later that the front-door bell rang. Thompson carried Shaw’s cases down the steps into the boot of the car. Shaw took Debonnair in his arms, held her very close. When he released her, Judith was coming out of the sitting-room. There was a look in her eye… that odd determination again, a purposeful determination. Shaw didn’t know what it could mean, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now. Latymer had said ‘at once,’ and ‘at once’ in the Outfit was no figure of speech. Shaw took Judith’s hand in his, held it for a moment, said:
“So long, Judith. I’ll be seeing you again soon. And — try not to think too much, my dear.”
Then he turned and ran down the steps, got into the car. Long and sleek and shining black, the car pulled away. Debonnair walked slowly back into the sitting-room and she looked for a long, long time at the smoke spiralling up from that cigarette, the cigarette which Shaw had lit so short a while ago. Her heart seemed to contract painfully as she watched the lengthening ash.
Latymer said briefly, “Well — there you are.” He pushed a neat cardboard folder across the desk. “It’s all there.”
“Yes, sir.” Shaw took the folder and opened it. There was a ticket for the next B.E.A. flight to Naples, leaving London at 3.20 in the morning. There was a first-class passage ticket from Naples to Sydney in the New South Wales, and there was a hotel reservation for one night at the Hotel Vittorio in the Via Podana.
Latymer said, “While you’re in Naples, you can keep your eyes skinned — you’ll have nearly two days and you may pick up something perhaps. Now — once you’re aboard the liner make your number with the Captain and with Colonel Gresham. They’ll have been warned to expect you. When you land at Sydney, get in touch with a certain Captain James of the R.A.N. You’ll find him at the base at Garden Island. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s the Intelligence man out there— he’s an Australian — and Foster’s there too, of course.”
Shaw nodded. Tommy Foster had worked in the Outfit in England, had been transferred some time before to the RA.N. Latymer went on, “Captain James will help you all he can whenever you need it, and you can contact him ahead if there’s anything you want done before you get to Sydney yourself. I’ll see he’s put fully in the picture at once, so that he can be working on this from his end meanwhile, but I want you to regard yourself throughout as personally responsible to me. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, as to your cover-story, just in case you need one, that’s simple. You’re going out as a plain naval officer on a normal exchange basis for duty with the R.A.N. That’s all been faked up with the Navy Board in Melbourne to-day. Right. Any questions?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“All right, then.” Latymer got up. He said, “Carberry’s waiting for you now, you’d better go straight down. Usual background stuff.” He accompanied Shaw to the door, looking grave. “Well — good-bye and good luck. You know what’s in the balance now, and from now on it’s up to you. We’ll be relying on you — all of us, Shaw.”
“I’ll do my best, sir, of course,” Shaw said, feeling inadequate. Then he turned and left the room. He went down to Captain Carberry’s section in the basement, where he had a long session with the man who was known as The Voice. That deceptive man — Carberry, the man who always seemed to boom out in exclamation marks rather than just speak, the man whose voice was so oddly bigger and plummier than his thin, dried-up body. Full of bonhomie, inane-sounding, a guffawing ass — on the surface only. Underneath, the best brain in the Outfit. Carberry explained in technical detail the whole principle of REDCAP.