“As I said — north! A long way north, into Russian territory. Now I’ll tell you something else: that’s where I have to head for, too.”
“How, Smith? How do you find your way into Russian territory?”
“That’s the big question! All I can tell you is I have to get there.”
She said softly, “If that is what you really feel you must do, it is possible that I can help.”
He tensed. “You, Ingrid? How?”
“I have told you, my mother’s cousin is very wealthy. She has wealthy friends. One of them is here now, in Hong Kong. Out in the harbour he has a motor-yacht, a big vessel that is new and fast, Smith. If I speak to him… it is possible that he would be willing to allow you the use of the yacht.”
Shaw let out a long breath. “It’s a nice thought, but even if your friend were willing, it still wouldn’t help. I haven’t the time for a cruise, Ingrid. When I move north, it has to be by air. There’s a lot of distance involved.”
She was silent for a moment, then she said, “Nothing will be lost by talking to this man. He is a man of many interests, and it may be that he can help, for though he lives now in Japan, he is a Swiss… and he also has suffered from Rudolf Rencke. Do you understand? He is discreet also. You need tell him nothing that is secret in any case. I will talk to him myself — you can leave that to me.” She caressed his ear. “Will you trust me, Smith, and come with me to see him?”
Frowning, he studied her face. He asked, “Why are you doing this?”
She said at once, “Smith, I told you I wished very much to help you, or I think I did. This is quite true, but there is also something else. I have told you what Rencke did to my sister. Chiefly I wish to see Rudolf Rencke destroyed… and I believe it is your ultimate aim to destroy him, is this not so?”
Grimly Shaw said, “Ultimately, yes.”
“Then let me help you. Had Rencke been in Hong Kong as I believed, I intended to help you, Smith. I intended to let it be known that I was here also, so that I could become the honey-pot that attracts the bee — always he has desired me physically, you see — and so that I could lead him into a prepared trap for you to arrest him or whatever it is you do. But in view of what you say about Rencke not being in Hong Kong — and you are the person who knows about these things — I believe my friend is well worth your seeing.”
Shaw said, “Time’s short. Suppose I agree… when could a meeting be fixed?”
“Oh, I can take you to him tonight! I will telephone my cousin and she will send round her car.” She moved a little against him. “In the meantime, we shall have a little wait. My cousin’s friend is entertaining aboard the yacht tonight. We must give his guests time to leave, you will agree? So, Smith — oh, Smith.…”
There was meaning and entreaty in her voice. Without speaking, Shaw reached for the light and switched it off.
On the line from the NASA base to the White House Klaber said, “No, Mr. President, there’s still nothing.” Not a word had been received from the capsule since Washington’s coded signal had been passed the day before. “They’re right out of communication.”
The line rattled in his ear. “You don’t consider that’s due to any technical fault, I gather?”
“No, sir, I do not, definitely. Not now. I’d say Danvers-Marshall has control inside the capsule, all right. He’s just playing safe and not letting them talk to us, though I don’t see why he feels the need to worry now. God knows, Mr. President… there’s nothing any of us can do down here! Even the launching—”
“Klaber,” the President broke in, “in the event of any trouble, I’m prepared to lose the capsule if necessary. But I’m not prepared to risk the men inside it.” There was a pause. “The search for the interference base is not going along too well currently, and we may have to act fast. We’ll have to try a rendezvous with Skyprobe IV and take those men off if it looks like becoming necessary. We must take a chance on Danvers-Marshall doing some damage if he has got control already… I do not believe he would risk his own neck, Klaber, up there, once he sees another spacecraft docking on the capsule. I’m asking you to step up the program for getting Skyprobe V into space.”
Klaber said, “We’re advancing everything, Mr. President, just as fast as humanly possible.” His voice was edgy with strain and tiredness. He himself had now come to believe that to launch Skyprobe V was the only hope left — if only it could be done. “I can’t make it any faster… and I’m bound to report again, I don’t believe it can be achieved in the time, even though the computer fault’s been corrected now.”
There was a silence as the President fought down his rising impatience, his feeling of terrible impotence. He wasn’t the man to harry responsible officials when he knew they were doing their best, as he knew Klaber was. There couldn’t be anyone better than Klaber to handle the job.
He said abruptly, “All right, Klaber, you’re the man on the spot. I’m happy to leave it to you — but just bear in mind what the implications are likely to be… if anything goes wrong.”
“I’ll do that, sir.”
When the President rang off the NASA chief put back the phone on his desk with a hand that shook badly. As Klaber had told the President, he didn’t believe there was any real prospect of going into docking procedure in the time available; and no-one knew what might happen when the Eastern maniacs started their interference programme. This sort of thing was virgin territory so far as NASA was concerned. Klaber’s mind ran, as it had been running ever since the news from London had broken, over the appalling possibilities. Currently they didn’t even know whether or not Skyprobe’s retro-system would operate. One thing, just one thing, needed to go haywire and the men were all done for. If anything hit the capsule, say if it were to be breached in any way on its ferociously fast descent into unauthorized and probably incapable hands… and say the Britisher used a gun in a panic and split the astronauts’ space suits… then the blood of Schuster and Morris was going, literally, to boil and they would die in seconds.
EIGHTEEN
Shaw had thought, What the hell… he hadn’t currently any alternative to offer anyway. The man could be worth talking to and not much time would be lost if he proved unhelpful. So he had agreed; and within two hours, after Ingrid had called her cousin, they were in the back of a luxurious limousine behind a Chinese chauffeur, driving out of the Kowloon streets and heading in the general direction of the border with Communist China.
They were forced to go slow in the dark, narrow thoroughfares, which even at this time of night were, in some cases at least, crowded still. Yellow faces pressed close, looking through the glass; the driver kept his finger on his siren, urging them from his path without noticeable success. Shaw sat silent for the most part, glancing now and again at Ingrid Lange as light from the streets fell across her face. As at last the car came clear of the streets and the ramshackle dwellings and shops, the speed was increased and they drove fast through colonies of stinking, broken-down huts filled with human squalor, until they hit the desolation of the open country north and east of Kowloon. They ran below the Kowloon hills, whose sides were in places covered with the shanty towns of the squatter area, the area that housed so many refugees from Red China, an area filled with the opium ‘divans,’ the shacks used by the addicts as shelters where they could indulge their vice.
Long before they reached the border and the frontier guards the car was turned off along a road to the right. This road led through a landscape as desolate as the earlier country had been, a landscape backed now by the hills of Red China, visible distantly across the water beneath a high, bright moon. After some five miles they turned off this road and headed along what was little better than an earth track, going slow on a rough, potholed surface. They came down to a small creek, no more than an indentation of the coastline — behind the island of Kat O in Mirs Bay, some way south of Starling Inlet, the girl told Shaw.