Shaw lowered his guns.
It was a pity about Thixey, who could have been made to talk, but it couldn’t be helped now. At least the way out was clear — but first Shaw had to make a close check right through the house. Among other things he rather hoped to find Rencke, who had been totally absent throughout all the persuasion proceedings earlier; but in the event the check produced nothing whatever, except Beatty, who was still out cold. It was only too obvious that Beatty would never have been put in possession of any hard facts and Shaw was far from keen to have his getaway lumbered by an unconscious girl… the Special Branch could clean up this place and they could put Beatty into hospital, under a security guard if they felt she was worth it.…
Shaw used some of the rope from the gallows to tie Beatty up securely and then, once he was satisfied he had missed nothing, he left the house and headed through the night for Purfleet. He made the journey on foot. Somebody, probably Rencke who must have pushed off earlier, had already taken the car.
THIRTEEN
“Right,” Latymer said into the telephone. He’d been fast asleep but there had been no sleep in his voice or in his reactions when Shaw had come on the line from a police station. “Get round here at once. There have been other developments — I’ll tell you when you get here.” He reached out and adjusted the shade of the bedside lamp. “Meanwhile I’ll contact the Special Branch and have ’em take over the Purfleet set-up, and I’ll also have another call put out for Rencke — and I’ll see if I can get the Polish ship intercepted.” He rang off, lay back for a moment with his eyes closed, then got busy on the phone again. When some while later Shaw arrived he found Latymer wearing a blue silk dressing-gown and drinking old brandy out of a balloon glass that reminded him irresistibly of Beatty.
Latymer stared. “You look a little frayed, but I’m glad to see you’re in one piece,” he said. “I dare say you can do with a drink. Help yourself.”
“Thank you, sir.” Shaw went over to a tray and poured a stiff whisky.
Latymer said, “I take it you won’t have heard about the spacecraft.”
“What’s new?” Shaw turned, with his glass in his hand. “Washington ordered them to ditch… but the retro-rockets failed. Schuster and Morris spent the next two orbits checking right through and they found no fault whatever anywhere — and I gather it has no connection with the slight fuel cell trouble they ran into earlier. They tried to go into retro-sequence again on the third orbit after, and the same thing happened.”
Shaw whistled. “Anything else known, sir?”
“Nothing. Which is not to say you won’t be able to read all about it by tomorrow evening, or I should say this evening… in all the world’s known languages! This is going to be a Pressman’s dream of paradise, and there’s going to be any amount of speculation flying around.” He lit a cigarette.
Shaw asked, “What’s the official theory?”
“There’s not one,” Latymer said briefly. “NASA’s foxed.”
“H’mmm… Shaw took a pull at the whisky. He asked, “Anything yet from the Special Branch?”
“Give them time, for heaven’s sake.”
“I thought they might have something on Thixey.”
“They haven’t, but I rang a man I know. Thixey was supposed to be on extended leave and he had permission to go abroad. His chief believed him to be sunning himself in Greece. Currently there’s considerable panic in that quarter—”
“I’m not surprised!”
“—and investigations are already in hand.” Latymer jerked ash oil his cigarette. “Tell me,” he said, “ah you got from Thixey.”
Shaw said, “That won’t take long! I told you about Danvers-Marshall. As to the rest… Thixey told me ‘they’ could intercept Skyprobe just as soon as the capsule reenters the earth’s atmosphere. He said that with Danvers-Marshall’s help they could do this whenever and wherever NASA orders it to ditch. He sounded pretty confident. Now, to me, what he said sounds as if they mean to bring the capsule down themselves — in their own way and at some preselected spot which certainly won’t be the Caribbean. Unfortunately Thixey didn’t go into the details of how or where!”
Latymer took a long pull at his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke. “As to how,” he said, “I would suggest a radio signal… some sort of interference with the controls.”
“I’ve been thinking along those lines but I doubt if it’s quite that, sir. Remember what I told you Thixey said about re-entry — if they were using a radio signal, they could go into action at any time, I imagine. Radio signals aren’t restricted to the earth’s atmosphere, after all.”
“True.” Latymer frowned. “Personally, I prefer to concentrate on where. If we can find their base, we’ve got ’em cold, and the how won’t matter. Now, if the deadline is the moment of re-entry, we have a little over five days in which to dig these people out, and—”
“Why only five, sir? Can’t the capsule stay in orbit till we’ve found them?”
Latymer said evenly, “No, it can’t. Skyprobe, so they tell me, has an endurance limit, a point in time when she must come down. Most unfortunately, that point will be reached only twenty-four hours after her properly scheduled splashdown time. Taking this extra time into account, it gives us just the five days. It’s because of limited fuel and oxygen capacity due to the tremendous load of specially built-in equipment Skyprobe is carrying, and to other technical factors. Before that final time limit runs out we have to find the interference base and inhibit it. That’s a tall order.” Latymer got to his feet and walked across the room towards a picture hanging above a Japanese cabinet. Sliding the picture aside he pressed a button behind it and along the opposite wall a section of panelling slid noiselessly aside and revealed a large world map, illuminated by concealed lighting. Latymer studied this map thoughtfully for some while, then swung round on Shaw. “Well?” he asked abruptly. “Any ideas?”
Shaw said, “Just a few. I was thinking about locations on the way in from Purfleet.” He hesitated. “My mind’s been running on the Pacific, and the North Pacific in particular.”
“H’m. Reasons?”
“From what Thixey said, it appears Russia is behind all this. It’s fairly obvious they won’t be behind it openly. Right, sir?”
“Check.” Latymer was staring at him keenly. “So?”
“So they’re not likely to be operating from inside the Soviet Union — I mean, they won’t want to bring the capsule down inside their own territory. That would be asking for trouble — Skyprobe’ll be tracked all the way down by radar, obviously. Well now — as I see it, they’ll have an extended base somewhere, a base not too far off from which they’ll take over the capsule after it’s ditched, wherever they originate their interceptory signals — or whatever the method is they mean to use. The radio base, if that is the scheme, could be inside Russia, I suppose — but I’m pretty certain the recovery base itself won’t be.”
“Go on, Shaw.” Latymer’s eyes were half closed now. “Where would you suggest we start looking?”
“I’ve already suggested the North Pacific. I rule out the seas north of Russia — we have to make some assumptions and I’m assuming they wouldn’t risk Danvers-Marshall’s valuable neck by attempting to divert the capsule into ice-bound waters. But I repeat, the recovery base would have to be somewhere near Soviet territory because of transportation problems afterwards. Of course, the operation could very well take place from a ship at sea, I suppose — a vessel that could hoist the capsule aboard and into her holds and then head for a Communist port.” He hesitated. “Look, sir. The North Pacific is a pretty vast area… I’d suggest I might be able to pick up something, and narrow the field a little, if I were to use say Hong Kong as a sounding-board. How does that strike you, sir?”