When he handed in his cypher the First Radio Officer said: “Another message, eh, Commander Shaw? You’re spending a fortune.”
Shaw grinned, lit a cigarette. “I’ll claim it back, don’t worry!”
“I suppose the Navy pays all your expenses,” the radio man agreed. “Lucky you didn’t want anything to go out this morning.” He took off his spectacles, wiped them, rubbed at his prominent eyes. “We couldn’t have got anything through the interference.”
“Oh?” Shaw asked casually, paying little attention. “How was that, then?”
“Don’t know, really. It was when we were stopped, alongside the Chinese tanker. She must have been sending, I suppose, though the characteristics weren’t what I’d have expected of a merchant ship.”
Shaw looked up, felt a sudden leap of his heart. “You certain it was the tanker?”
“Well, no, but I think it must have been. It was very close, and she was the only ship around. It wasn’t the aircraft.” The radio man screwed up his eyes, seemed puzzled. “It was intermittent transmitting on a V.H.F. wavelength which somehow or other cut across all our ordinary transmissions and mucked ’em up completely.”
“V.H.F.” Shaw repeated softly. “Any idea what kind of signals they were?”
“Couldn’t read ’em, of course. But from the characteristics of the interference… well, I’d say it fitted in with the transmission of three-letter groups.”
Shaw’s mouth set. He asked harshly, “You didn’t think of reporting this to anybody, did you?”
The radio man seemed surprised. “No — why should I? Nothing anyone could do about it, except maybe to ask ’em to pipe down. But I thought perhaps it was something to do with the medical case, and we hadn’t anything important going out. The incomings can mostly wait, too…
Shaw interrupted, “Was it going on all the time, then?”
“Yes. Whole time we were stopped, pretty well.”
“But for some of the time at least, their wireless office wasn’t manned.” He had particularly noticed that; the tanker’s wireless office had let off the wheelhouse, and the door had been open both times he had been on the bridge.
The Radio Officer shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. They may have a secondary transmitting position. It’d be unusual, though, but then, as I say, so was the transmission itself. Didn’t sound like an ordinary merchant ship’s signals, somehow. But it was certainly going on all the time.”
Shaw left the room, his mind racing, going back over all he’d seen aboard the Tungtai. He went along to the Senior Second Officer’s cabin. Kelly was in there alone, and Shaw asked him:
“Mr Kelly, did you happen to notice the tanker’s wireless room while I was below with the doctor this morning?”
“Yes. Door was open all the time. Why?”
Shaw said non-committally, “Oh, just a thought… you didn’t notice if they were transmitting, I suppose?”
Kelly shook his head. “They weren’t. Place was empty all the time.”
“I see. Well — thanks very much.”
Shaw left the cabin, went down to the tween-deck and had a look at REDCAP, his mind full of unformulated suspicions and fears. But all was well in the tween-deck, and the MAPIACCIND guard reported that nothing unusual had taken place all day. When Shaw reached his cabin, a sealed envelope came down from the Captain with a copy of a cable just received for Andersson. Shaw read it carefully, but it conveyed nothing to him. After that he turned in, worrying and fretting. For the moment there was nothing more he could do; Captain James in Australia would now, he trusted, spare no effort to have the tanker intercepted, and he could only hope they would be lucky enough to get her before she made an Australian landfall and disappeared into that wild northern coastline.
In his own cabin Sigurd Andersson was reading the wireless message which had just come in. His face was expressionless as he read it, but soon afterwards he walked out of his room and went circumspectly along to the engineers’ alleyway and knocked at Siggings’s door. Going in, he accepted a glass of whisky. Sitting back comfortably on the settee, he said:
“The first stage of the plan has met with a check. I am therefore ordered, as a precaution against any checks in the next stage, to proceed with what we have already discussed, you and I.”
Siggings asked, “You mean that box?”
Andersson nodded. “Correct! You will place it to-morrow. I leave the time to you, but let me know beforehand when it is to be, also the precise thickness of the deck to which it is to be fixed. I shall then make the settings and start it working just before I hand it to you.”
Shaw’s troubled thoughts ran on and on, round and round. He’d felt suspicious all along about that tanker. That seaman, his back deliberately smashed if O’Hara was right, smashed most likely so that the New South Wales, finding a genuinely injured man, would remain close for long enough… long enough for somebody to transmit three-letter groups on V.H.F.
The implications of that couldn’t be ignored.
Perhaps REDCAP’s operational ability could be destroyed by outside radio interference. There would have to be a full-scale technical overhaul now, once the crate reached Bandagong.
Shaw lay there, tossing and turning in his bunk, working things out in his mind, and at last sleep came.
He dreamed away, horrible dreams, was almost conscious at times of his own snores; he slept so near the surface that when he heard the faint rustle of his door-curtain he awoke immediately, and fully alert.
He remained quite still, held his breath and listened.
There was some one there right enough… in the faint sea-light creeping through the jalousie he thought he saw the curtain move aside, very gently. He felt under the pillow for his revolver. He wasn’t conscious of having made any noise as he shifted in the bunk, but the curtain dropped at once. Shaw snapped,
“Still or I’ll fire!”
At the same moment he reached out, found the light switch. As light flooded the cabin he saw the curtain move again as though in a draught, and then he fired. The roar and the smell of gunsmoke filled the cabin. There was no movement from outside, no sound at all. Shaw jumped out of bed and ran for the doorway, ripped the curtain aside.
No one there…
He dashed out through the small lobby into the alleyway. There was no sign of anyone who might have come into his cabin, though the alleyway was already coming to life as scared faces peered from doorways; there was a babble of talk, women’s voices frightened, men’s taut but reassuring. They stared at the pyjama-clad figure running fast now along the passage and holding a smoking gun. Women began to cry. A blue-uniformed night-steward, white-faced, hurried up from ahead. He saw the gun, but nervously barred the way.
He said, “Just a minute, sir — just a minute if you please, sir-”
Shaw snapped, “Out of my way. I’ll explain later.” He pushed the man aside, jabbing at him with his gun, and ran on.
It wasn’t — it couldn’t have been — much more than a minute after he’d awoken that Shaw reached Andersson’s cabin and flung back the curtain. A faint snore drifted across. He jabbed at the light switch savagely.