“On a big country estate in the wilds of Hampshire, not far from Petersfield. It used to be a private school, and before that a stately home. Ideal for Rockham’s purposes. Ostensibly he runs it as a kind of exclusive health farm, to discourage too many local questions.”
“And the place is well guarded, I suppose?”
“A veritable fortress. High walls, barbed-wire fences, armed patrols, dogs — the lot.”
“Why not drop a bomb on it?” suggested the Saint pragmatically.
Pelton ran a hand through his sparse grey hair and sighed with the resigned patience of a civil servant accustomed to the bureaucratic brakes that inhibit his enterprise.
“There are times,” he said, “When I really do envy you free-lancers your scope for direct action. Of course we could smash The Squad out of existence in a matter of minutes, if we chose. And you can imagine how the army are chafing at the bit, after their own contact with The Squad. But the fact is, we daren’t break up the organisation just yet — not until we know a good bit more about it. So far we’re by no means certain the Squad — the entire organisation — or even its centre.”
“No point in cutting off a tentacle and leaving the octopus,” ventured the Saint.
“Exactly. There’s still a great deal we don’t know. As I said, Rockham’s information is good. Our own is less good. Which is where you come in — if you’ll do it. We badly need a man on the inside, Simon.”
“An infiltrator?” The Saint’s lazy blue eyes searched Pelton’s face. “But why me? There must be plenty of first-class agents in SIS, and several in your own department who’d be suitable. What about Randall, for instance? This assignment might have been tailor-made for him.”
Simon’s reference was to Jack Randall, one of his most affectionately remembered war-time colleagues, an American anglophile who had joined Pelton’s department after the peace.
“In my opinion, you’re the best man for the job,” Pelton said candidly, but also with a hint of evasion which, at the time, Simon only half-registered. “Though in view of your reputation I had the devil of a time convincing the red-tape wallahs at the Ministry, I can tell you. And even more of a job persuading them to sanction a fee that wouldn’t strike you as totally derisory.”
“Don’t tell me the amount,” said the Saint quickly. “It won’t make any difference. I’m afraid I’m not taking the job. I won’t deny I’m fascinated and tempted — by the thought of getting to grips with this cross between Al Capone and the Foreign Legion, and I won’t deny that I’m flattered. But I’m a freelancer through and through. So thanks — but I did warn you,” he ended rather lamely.
Somehow, having said all that, the Saint was uneasily aware that something still remained to be said, or asked. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Pelton looked less disappointed than he ought to have done — as if, for him, the game was not yet lost.
And that was when Simon remembered the faint note of evasion that had crept into Pelton’s voice. Somewhere there had been something out of place, or out of tune, or micrometrically out of focus...
And then suddenly, before he had groped even halfway to an answer, he was chilled by an icy wind of apprehension; and he found himself almost by instinct steering the conversation towards its source.
“I’m afraid you’ll just have to use one of your own men after all,” he told Pelton in a voice that outran his conscious mind.
“But I daren’t,” Pelton said. “At least, not a frontline man. For all we know, Rockham may even have photos of some of our regular operators — courtesy of one of the Opposition’s intelligence. I can’t take that risk. Whereas you — your face would never be associated with us now. And besides, the cover I have in mind for you involves an element of disguise—”
“Well, if your infiltrator’s appearance is going to be altered anyway, I can’t see that there’d be any special risk of recognition,” Simon put in reasonably. “And as it happens Randall’s an expert in that line, as he proved in France. Why not let him have a crack at it? Or is he busy elsewhere?”
Pelton hesitated for a long moment; and when he spoke Simon knew that the evasion had been real.
“No, he’s not busy,” Pelton said with deliberate calm.
“Prepare yourself for a shock, Simon. I’m afraid Randall has already met The Squad.”
The Saint went very still.
“What’s happened to him?” he asked levelly; but he had a premonition of what the answer would be.
“Randall is dead. You’ll remember there always was a streak of recklessness in him. He insisted on going over the wall, down at Rockham’s HQ, to see what he could nose out. His body was fished out of the Thames a week ago. Unidentifiable — except by a secret mark known to us.
3
It was as if a photographic flash-bulb had been exploded in front of Simon Templar’s eyes. For a while he scarcely saw the man before him, and yet certain details registered mechanically on the film of his memory, so that as much as a year later he might have been able to picture accurately the exact shape of a patch of chipped-off paint on the skirting board beyond Pelton’s desk in that supremely unmemorable office.
He had worked with Randall. And then their paths had diverged, as men’s paths do. But to Simon Templar, Randall was a part of the memory of those days when he had found another kind of satisfaction, as complete in its way as any he had known before or since, when Simon and Randall and others had forged links of mutual respect and brotherhood amid the often hair-raising exigencies of their exploits with the French resistance workers. Frenchman and American and Briton had spoken for once in the same accents, the accents of determination and freedom. Men had been bonded then in a kind of loyalty that only the menace of a common enemy can cement; and it was understood as an inevitable fact of life, and not to be questioned, that when one brave man fell, any of his friends and comrades would step forward to take his place, with a purpose made only more firm by the knowledge of the risks involved...
And now Randall was dead.
It never even occurred to the Saint that he still had a choice. Almost mechanically, he repeated that the amount of the proffered fee was irrelevant, but said that he would take the job.
Only afterwards was it fully borne in upon him how skilfully Pelton had played the news of Randall’s death, like a high trump kept till the last card. He must have known enough about the kind of man Simon Templar was, and about his likely reactions, to be fairly doubtful of enlisting his aid, so he had saved his biggest gun for the moment when its effect would be most immediately and hopefully decisive.
This said something for Pelton’s strategic talents — which duly went up a couple of notches in the Saint’s estimation — but it also bespoke a degree of coldblooded calculation which cast doubt on his more sympathetic facade, which duly went down the same scale by a similar amount.
But that was after Simon had had a chance, later, to sit down and think about it soberly. At the time, he was carried along in the bitter wake of that final news of Randall. His concentration, once the initial shock had passed, was focused with a grim intensity on one thing and one thing only: the business of getting to grips with The Squad at once or if possible sooner. The Saint was spoiling for a fight, and he was in no mood to wait.
On that score as well as from his healthy aversion to being wrapped up in iron bars and concrete, he was about as far from overjoyed as it is possible to be when Pelton told him that his cover as George Gascott would take an absolute minimum of four weeks to establish, and that he would have to spend three of them in jail.
Patience had never been one of Simon Templar’s outstanding virtues. He was inclined to be impatient in particular with the way things are done in official, as opposed to privateering circles. It often seemed to him, setting aside exaggeration and trying to look at the matter with scrupulous objectivity, that the processes whereby officialdom ground out its slow results were mostly characterised by a degree of lead-footedness beside which a palsied geriatric snail battling through thick treacle against a strong headwind would have seemed to be positively zipping along.