He said quietly after a moment, “Yes, Mary, you’re dead right they are. Perhaps it’s worth a chance. We’ll give him a little longer yet, though.”
It was 3.45 when James reached out for the phone and asked for a number within the base.
He snapped, “James here. Get hold of Jackson and Hathaway. Send ’em along here with a car. At once.” Putting down the receiver, he got up and went to the safe. Opening it, he brought out an automatic and, slipping in some cartridges, he put the gun in his pocket.
Fifteen minutes later the naval car pulled up outside Ling’s restaurant.
The men in the yard took Shaw down to a cellar and then the questioning started. Knowing Shaw would have reported all he had learned at Bandagong, they wanted to know exactly what action the authorities intended taking and what the line-up of the security precautions would be.
The questioning went on and on until Shaw’s mind reeled, his whole body ached with Karstad’s blows and kicks; but he said nothing at all and at last they gave it up and left him alone in the darkness. There was, indeed, little he could have told them even if he had wished to do so — except the negative news that the MAPIACCIND powers were as yet taking no direct, overall action.
All the time the questioning had been going on he had sensed the men’s nervous tension, their anxiety to be away; but it was after nightfall before they came down again and brought him up from the cellar and forced him into the back of the long black car, which was to be driven by the Chinese who had been with Karstad in the van earlier. Lubin got into the front, and Karstad, his face still swollen and scarred, got into the back with Shaw and the distinguished-looking Dr Tien.
They drove in silence out of Sydney, through almost deserted streets — it was close on midnight now — going fast after they had cleared the suburbs, rocketing down into Victoria. Shaw studied the back of Lubin’s head, feeling almost a sense of awe that one man should be holding so much terrible power. Lubin hadn’t taken much part in the questioning and beating-up earlier, had seemed to hold himself aloof as though the scientific brain preferred to leave such crudities to others. And yet the crudity which he was preparing to inflict on the world was the supreme one of all. No death, Shaw felt, could be bad enough for this man.
After a while Shaw asked, “Where are we going?”
Dr Tien looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He said, “To a place called Wilson’s Promontory.”
Shaw bit his lip. So — James had been right. And thank God for that. Forcing himself not to show any feelings, Shaw hoped silently that James would have his men at the Promontory in time. But even so Wilson’s Promontory, that big headland, Australia’s southernmost tip as he had seen on the map, jutting out into the Bass Strait to the eastward of Cape Liptrap, right where the Southern Ocean met the Pacific, would take a lot of covering. Tien went on smoothly, “The ship will pass within a mile or two of Wilson’ Promontory. We shall arrive in the vicinity at about noon. That gives us plenty of time. The New South Wales is due to pass between there and Flinders Island at four in the afternoon, and she will keep quite close enough in to the mainland even though the weather forecast is bad. That is when Lubin uses his transmitter, which has been in its position for a day or so now… and my nation is fully ready to follow up as soon as he transmits. To-morrow, when the liner passes Wilson’s Promontory, instruments will tell my country that the big Powers have vanished, and then the armies and the air forces will get the executive signal to move closer to the devastated lands.”
Shaw kept cool. He asked conversationally, “Dr Tien, as a civilized man, don’t you think at all about the bloodshed— doesn’t it worry you, all this killing of innocent people?”
Tien laughed again. “No. It is done, you see, in the sacred name of our nation. We are a very old civilization, after all, as you must be aware. Our land was great, very great, greater than yours is now, centuries before you English had ceased being savages.”
“And that doesn’t give you any feeling of — of responsibility, any regard for human values?”
Tien’s voice was harsh now as he said, “Commander, you have a saying your country — Charity begins at home. I also have a saying, which runs: Responsibility and regard for human values begins at home too. It is not good for a whole people to have suffered for so long, as we did until our leader delivered us, under the heel of the foreigner. And remember, your Western armies marched against innocent people in their day, and hit them with weapons which were then considered advanced, cruel, wicked. You cannot deny that.” He made a gesture with his hand. “But why should I discuss all this with you? Very soon our plan will be an accomplished fact.”
Shaw snapped, “Don’t be so certain. Suppose those signals of Lubin’s don’t work? Suppose the MAPIACCIND Powers have immobilized their stockpiles — which they’re sure to have done by now. What happens then, Dr Tien?”
Tien laughed softly. “They will not have done that at all. My country has friends in very high places, men of influence who have used the weight of their prestige to make the nations dither as Westerners always dither in times of crisis, insidiously to lull the MAPIACCIND countries into a false sense of security, men who have told the Powers that we are only bluffing, that we intend nothing that can harm them.” He half turned and looked hard at Shaw. “Come, my friend, is that not so — do they not even now refuse to believe?”
Shaw’s mouth tightened. This was much too close to the sorry truth. But he said, “I wouldn’t bank on that. Our Intelligence Services haven’t been quite asleep.”
Tien seemed amused. He said, “Commander, you are very simple! Naturally, we have taken pains to provide against pitfalls. It could hardly have failed to occur to us that the MAPIACCIND countries might conceivably have taken precautions notwithstanding the assurances of our friends — particularly after you got away from Bandagong, and that is why we had to question you. We had indeed provided against such a possibility from the start — we left nothing to chance. Our information is that so far no precautions have been taken by the MAPIACCIND Directorate — but let us concede for a moment that, before four o’clock in the afternoon, they do. Well?” Tien smiled almost benevolently. “Then the alternative comes into operation. It will not be quite so immediately effective as a simultaneous world-wide detonation of all the nuclear devices, but it will suffice… yes, it will suffice… and it will have precisely the same effect in the end. My friend, whatever happens it will be over for you, you and the liner and the rest. You cannot win.”
After that Tien, evidently feeling he had said too much already and bearing in mind that Shaw had recently made one unexpected escape, had refused positively to say anything further. The car rushed on in the night, through wind and rain which increased as they went farther south, heading out fast through Picton and Goulburn, skirting Canberra itself, crossing the Snowy River, flying down for Gippsland.
As they went Shaw, sunk now in his nightmare thoughts, sat there silently, filled with bitter anxieties, wondering what it was that Tien had in mind. The car passed on, and it was when they came into Gippsland that the bad weather really hit them and what had been merely a strong wind became a gale lashing in from the sea, a gale which ripped along and tore at the speeding car; rain soaked down blindingly, brought their pace down as it flooded the windscreen and splashed up on either side. The windows rattled, the wind screamed eerily at them, and it grew cold. Dirty weather out at sea, Shaw thought. Maybe the New South Wales would stand well clear of the Promontory after all. That seemed the only hope now; but a glance at his companions showed that they were not unduly worried — and Tien had said, of course, that the weather wouldn’t stop them.