When he had seen the Air Force chief and his aides into the car Klaber went along to his own office leading off the conference room. He spoke to Lutz, who went across to a cupboard and poured two stiff whiskies. Lutz came back to where Klaber was standing and passed his chief a tumbler. Klaber took the whisky at a gulp and said, “That’s better.” He looked up at his PA. “What’s on your mind now, Harry?”
Harry Lutz said, “The Press, Mr. Klaber.” Lutz had a perpetually anxious look, as if he were everlastingly wondering what he had left undone.
“The Press?” Klaber lifted an eyebrow. “So what?”
“So this: suppose something leaks, either here or in Britain? Suppose the Press boys get to this before we release it?” The anxious look deepened. “You thought of that, Mr. Klaber?”
“So far as I know, Harry, I’ve thought of everything.” The space chief smiled bleakly, without humour. “That’s just one of the points. The Press won’t be told a thing without my say-so, and they won’t release it even then, till I say.”
“You sure of that, Mr. Klaber?” Lutz ran a hand over his face. He was always apprehensive of the Press.
Klaber said grimly, “They had better not, Harry.” He looked at his watch, checked it with the atomic-action clock on the wall of his office. “I’m going down for a bite to eat, Harry. Call me at once if Washington’s on the line again.”
They came for Shaw when a faint daylight had been trying hard for the last three hours to filter through a dirty, cobweb-festooned grating that admitted air to the cellar. He heard the creak as the door opened and then, briefly, footsteps on the stone. The footsteps stopped short of half way down and the outline of a man showed up against the light of day coming more strongly through the door from the passageway beyond.
It was the man Rencke had spoken of as Horn, the one who had been alongside Shaw in the car. Horn sounded American. He called down, “Right, mac. On your feet. You’re wanted.”
The light glinted on metal; it was a .45 revolver and it was wearing a silencer. The Essex riverside probably wasn’t quite the place for the sub-machine-gun Rencke had been carrying the day before, but that heavy revolver could blow a hole in a man’s body big enough to run a fist through. Shaw got to his feet, sliding about on loose coal, unable to steady himself with his tied hands. The American didn’t help out; he just stood there on the steps, behind the gun, enjoying a sense of power. Shaw moved towards the steps and the gunman backed up ahead of him. At the top he was told to turn to the left, and he walked ahead of the gun along a passage until he was halted by a door standing ajar. He was told to kick this door open and when he did so he was pushed ahead into a cloakroom. Moss was waiting inside, finishing a cigarette. While the American covered Shaw with the revolver Moss untied his hands, then leaned back against a tiled wall and, with the hand that didn’t hold a gun, started picking his nose.
“Wash,” Horn said. “We don’t like dirt around here. There’s a shaver ready for you, too. Your host is very particular, mac.” He indicated an electric shaver, already plugged in to a point alongside a mirror. There was also a new toothbrush and an unused tube of paste. The service was good, once away from the cellar. Shaw got to work on himself gladly, and sluiced away the coal-dust. When he was ready Horn prodded him out through the door again and along the passage, and halted him at another door leading off the hall.
Moss walked round Shaw and opened the door.
Shaw stopped short in the doorway of a room where two men and a girl were finishing breakfast; it was one of the most ordinary domestic scenes imaginable. Or it would have been if the characters had been different. One of the men was Rudolf Rencke. The girl, a dark piece who used much eye-shadow, was in her early twenties and looked as if she’d just come in from a night on the razzle. But the other man, seated negligently back from the head of the table with his knees crossed, reading the Times, was nearer Shaw’s mental image of the kind of master this house would have — yet he was possibly the most surprising person to find at this particular table. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man, handsome, with thick, neatly-oiled hair greying above the ears, perfectly groomed in an elegant, expensive and beautifully-cut suit and an Old Etonian tie. Shaw knew that if he had chosen to wear it, the man would have been equally entitled to the colours of the Brigade of Guards. For, on a kind of nodding acquaintanceship, Shaw knew him. His name was Hilary St George Thixey and he worked for a certain department of State as elegant as himself. On the security side.
NINE
“Morning, old man! You’ll have some breakfast, of course?” Thixey was entirely at ease, the perfect host, welcoming, charming. Putting the Times down beside his plate he smiled across at Shaw. “Or are you not hungry, after the unfortunate occurrences during the last twenty-four hours? I’m awfully sorry about the way you had to be treated, by the way — but it really couldn’t be helped, old man.” He brushed a crumb off his cuff.
Shaw asked, “What are you doing here, Thixey?”
Thixey waved a hand, dismissingly. “Don’t worry about all that for now, old man. Don’t let’s discuss business before you’ve eaten. Breakfast discussions were all very well in the more spacious days when one had had a couple of hours’ crack-of-dawn sniping at the wild duck, what? In these days it’s uncivilized — not done! Do sit down, my dear chap.”
Thixey gestured to Moss. Moss glanced at Shaw, moved past him into the room, and pulled out a chair. There being nothing else to do in this astonishing situation, Shaw walked forward and sat down at the table. Moss asked sardonically, “Bacon an’ eggs — fried? Or haddock, for the gentleman?”
“Neither. Just a roll and marmalade.” He didn’t feel in the least like fried eggs or haddock for the time being, but the hot rolls smelt almost appetizing; so did the coffee. He wondered if this was some dream resulting from the blow he’d taken on his head, or from the hypodermic. It simply wasn’t making sense.
Moss said, “Rolls are on the table, aren’t they? Help yourself. Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee — hot, strong and very black.” The girl was watching him, Shaw noticed, with something like approval and desire in her eyes. She looked tough — she was big-built, rather like a layman’s idea of a prison wardress. Any man less tough would be eaten alive. Moss poured coffee and brought the cup to the table, setting it beside Shaw. While Shaw drank, Moss retreated to the window where he slouched against the wall and started picking his nose again. Thixey was watching Shaw, an enigmatic smile twisting his lips. Shaw stared back at him, wondering what the man was playing at, whose side he was on. Thixey had a first-class reputation for brains and initiative, and in his younger days had had his share of field work as an agent. It went without saying that his record was as clear as a bell, that his background and connections were quite beyond reproach… it was inconceivable, surely, that he could be a traitor. Yet here he was, apparently totally accepted by these men, including Rudolf Rencke. Where, how and why — and when — had Thixey deviated? That background of his didn’t lead a man towards Communism — or could it, perhaps? The stately home — Thixey’s home was Weltham Hall and he was by way of being the local squire, or would have been in the more spacious days of duck shooting that he’d spoken of — Eton and Sandhurst and the Brigade of Guards, followed by absorption into high-level security and all that that entailed, could have produced some kind of inner rebellion, a revulsion of the spirit. It had happened before. And agents, of all people, had the best opportunities of making the wrong sort of contacts — they had to, simply in the line of duty. Thixey could have been seduced by cash or promises — he probably wasn’t exactly wealthy according to his standards — or by threats, after an indiscretion? One thing was clear: Shaw had been brought, if not right to the heart of whatever was being planned against the American space mission, then at least pretty close to it; for Hilary St. George Thixey, if he was one of the other side, must, by the very nature of his British standing and his professional knowledge, be one of the bigger boys in the set-up. They would hardly employ a top British security man as tea boy.