Shaw, slightly baffled by science, asked: “What about the signals themselves — the ones that put REDCAP into operation? Do they change at regular intervals?”
Carberry gave his booming laugh. “Oh, great Scott, no! Good heavens! They don’t change at all. Look, old boy, I’ll explain again.” He leaned back in a cloud of pipe-smoke. “The operating signals are no use to anybody except the MAPIACCIND operating staff, the boys who actually have REDCAP in their possession. So it’s just a once-for-all setting. Same with the frequencies — each country has its own, and it remains constant. That’s not to say the signals aren’t fearfully secret — of course they are, just as a normal precaution! Actually, there’s only the two copies in existence. One’s always with the MAPIACCIND H.Q. in Geneva, and the other’s for actual operational use, the one they’ll refer to if they ever want to transmit. Temporarily, that one is with Colonel Gresham, and he hands it over to the Commandant at Bandagong when he delivers REDCAP.”
“Uh-huh. Would Lubin know what these signals are?”
Carberry put his finger-tips together pontifically and gazed up at the ceiling. “Our information,” he said, “is that he would not. No one person was allowed to get the whole picture complete. It was this way: after Lubin had built the set in such a way that it could operate on any combination of letters, the Secretary-General of MAPIACCIND had a little lucky dip in private! What I mean is, old boy — he selected the actual three-letter groups and these were then set by another radio expert — our own man, actually, a Professor MacGregor. And he made the settings on the stockpiles, too.”
“Fair enough. Thank you… and now, what about photographs? Have you got one of Lubin?”
“Yes.” Carberry went over to a filing cabinet, pulled out a deep drawer, foraged about for a moment, then brought out a photograph. Shaw looked at it, memorized it carefully. Lubin could have altered — either by nature or cosmetics— since this was taken, but the physical structure would remain: a short, skinny man, puny. As to the rest… thick grey hair, dome-shaped head, clean-shaven, bad teeth, big ears… almost a typical man-in-the-street’s idea of an egghead, but so much of the adornments and appendages could be given a new look.
Carberry came round the desk, glanced over his shoulder. He said, as though confirming Shaw’s own thoughts: “Genuine, dyed-in-the-wool egghead, guaranteed harmless in himself. Rumour has it he’s rather a retiring sort of chap. Tell you something, old boy. It’s the lads behind Lubin that you’ve got to break through! They’re going to be the tough nuts.”
Shaw said thoughtfully, “I’ve just an idea you’re dead right. By the way, have you a photo of Karstad, just in case?”
Carberry lifted his shoulders sadly. “We never had one of Karstad, I’m sorry to say. Bad — but there it is! Didn’t you meet him once, though?”
“I saw him, that’s all. I can hardly remember him now. I didn’t actually meet him, and he didn’t see me at all.”
Carberry’s laugh boomed out. “Probably just as well, old man, probably just as well!”
Later, as the plain black car turned down the Mall and headed through the night along the wide, deserted thoroughfare past Buckingham Palace bound for Heathrow, Shaw found himself thinking back and wishing Latymer hadn’t said what he had about relying on him. For some reason or other, that kind of remark always made him so terribly aware of his own shortcomings, his inadequacies. Reluctantly almost, in the back of that comfortable car, he felt for the hard reassurance of his Service revolver, handy in the shoulder-holster beneath his plain grey worsted jacket.
He felt he’d be needing that again before long…
The car swept up to the airport. Shaw got out and said good-bye to Thompson, who drove off. As Shaw walked quickly into the building, a man with a bowler hat and a brief case who had been sitting in a chair reading the Evening Standard folded up his newspaper and got to his feet. Taking a cigarette from a silver case, he watched unobtrusively as the baggage for the Naples flight was collected together. Then he strolled about aimlessly and when Shaw had disappeared he went away towards a telephone kiosk. Four pennies dropped into the box metallically… clang, clang, clang, clang.
The man thought, and he smiled faintly as he thought it, that they sounded like four separate knells of doom — if doom could be said to come four times. Maybe one of them would be for the man he’d just seen joining the Naples plane… himself, he was only one of many minor operatives, so he couldn’t make any guesses as to who the other three might be for.
Within a few hours a carefully worded cable was received in the radio office of the New South Wales and was sent down to the heavily built man who had embarked at Tilbury.
CHAPTER FIVE
At eight o’clock in the morning Shaw was looking down through the cabin windows as the airliner began to lose height, circling to touch down at Capodichino. He saw the fabulous city and environs of Naples rushing up below him, the city fringing the deep blue water of the bay; beyond, Vesuvius reared into the sky, its summit issuing faint trails of smoke as Shaw watched, trails which lost themselves in a clear sky. It was a wonderful morning; Shaw had managed to snatch an hour or two of much-needed sleep during the flight, and he felt refreshed and invigorated as, shortly after, he bent his tall frame through the doorway and stepped out of the airliner, stepped into brilliant sunshine which was as yet not so strong that it took away the clear freshness of the morning.
Some eighty minutes after completing the entry formalities, Shaw was at the Naples air terminal. From there he walked along to the Australia and Pacific Line’s agents in the Via Roma, where he was told that the New South Wales would enter the bay at 8 a.m. next day, land her transit passengers at the Maritima Stazione for a day’s sight-seeing, and then embark the Naples contingent at 3 p.m. After that he collected his gear from the air terminal, left some of it at the Maritima Stazione, and then walked along the waterfront to his hotel.
Shaw spent that day looking around the city, strolling along the hot, busy, opulent streets interspersed with depressing slum alleys, going casually into bars and eating-places, keeping his senses well on the alert. And, as he had suspected, this was in vain.
As Latymer had said, it was just a vague chance that he might pick up something in Naples and it was no good getting worried because he’d failed to do so. Nevertheless, as he walked back to his hotel, Shaw began to feel the utter hopelessness of his job. To look for one man who might in point of fact be anywhere in the triangle China-England-Australia was a pretty large assignment.
Next day at 3 p.m. Shaw was at the Maritima Stazione and going aboard the ship. The liner’s deck seemed to loft over the embarking passengers like a skyscraper as they crossed the telescopic gangway from the jetty into the great side with its rows of ports. Shaw, as he went through the gunport door into the foyer, felt himself at once enfolded in an atmosphere of luxury and efficiency, a scene of controlled bustle.
There was the familiar ship-smell, the familiar background noise of ventilating systems at work, of forced-draught blowers, a noise which at first beat on the ears and then became just one more of many ship-noises. A line of white-jacketed stewards waited to take the Naples passengers’ hand-gear and lead them to their cabins, up or down spotless, gleaming staircases, and along cabin corridors in whose decks one could see one’s own reflection. Shaw was only just aboard when a man came forward to take his grip; but not before he had been peremptorily barked at by the Chief Steward, who was standing just inside the gunport. Shaw glanced briefly at the Chief Steward, wondered if that order had been really necessary.