By this time my chest was hurting me, so I started breathing again.
"Well, it works!" Farley smacked a fist into a palm in grinning exultation. He gave a long tremulous sigh of satisfaction, he'd been without oxygen even longer than I had. "It works, Bentall, it works!"
"Of course it works. I never expected anything else." I rose stiffly to my feet, rubbing the wet palms of my hands against my drills, and crossed over to where Captain Griffiths sat with his officers. "Enjoy the show, Captain?"
He studied me coldly, not bothering to hide the dislike, the contempt in his eyes, and glanced at the left side of my face.
"LeClerc seems to like using his cane, doesn't he?" he asked.
"It's just an addiction he's got."
"And so you collaborated with him." He looked me up and down with all the enthusiasm of an art collector who's been promised a Cezanne and finds a comic coloured postcard in front of him. "I didn't think you would, Bentall."
"Sure, I collaborated with them," I agreed. "No moral fibre at all. But the court-martial can wait, Captain Griffiths." I sat down, pulled off shoe and sock, removed a paper from its plastic cover, smoothed out the creases and handed it to him. "What do you make of this? Quickly, please. I found it in LeClerc's office and I'm certain it's in some way connected with his plans for shipping the second Shrike to its destination. Nautical stuff isn't in my line."
He took the paper reluctantly as I said: "The Pelican's a ship, we know that, because LeClerc himself told us. I suspect the others are too."
"Pelican-Takishamaru 20007815" Captain Griffiths read. 'Takishamaru is a Japanese ship name, no doubt about that. Linkiang-Hawetta 10346925. Probably all ships' names. All paired. Now, what would that be for. The numbers, always eight numbers." He was getting interested. "Times, could they be times? 2000 could be 8 p.m., none of the first four numbers go higher than twenty-four. But the second four do. References of some kind. Ships, eh? Now what kind of references-" His voice trailed off, I could see his lips moving, then he said slowly: "I think I have it. No, I know I have it."
"2000 is twenty point oh-oh. Latitude twenty degrees south. 7815 stands for 178.15 degrees east. Together they give a position less than fifty miles west of here." He studied the paper in silence for almost a minute while I looked over my shoulder to see if there was any sign of LeClerc approaching: there was none, he would be waiting to hear from the Neckar about the success of the firing.
"They're all lat. and long, positions," Griffiths said finally. "It's difficult to be sure without a chart but I could be fairly certain that if those positions were plotted they would represent a north-east curve from here to some position off the Chinese or Formosan coasts. I should imagine those ships- pairs of ships, rather-will be located on those positions, I should also imagine they would have the duty of escorting the vessel carrying the rocket, or keeping a lookout or seeing that the road is clear. LeClerc would have taken precautions, I imagine, against the premature discovery of the fact that the rocket had been stolen."
"They would be armed, those ships, you think?" I said slowly.
"Highly unlikely." He was an intelligent incisive old bird with a mind that matched his sharp speech. "It would have to be concealed arms, and no amount of concealed arms would be a match for any searching warship which would be the only thing they would have to fear."
"They might be radar-equipped vessels, searching the sea and air for fifty, a hundred miles round?"
"They might. They probably would be."
"But wouldn't this ship carrying the rocket be equipped with its own radar?"
Captain Griffiths handed me back the paper.
"It won't be," he said positively. "LeClerc is the kind of man who will always succeed because he takes precautions elaborate to the point almost of the ridiculous. Almost, I say. This paper is of no use to you, even if you could act on the information enclosed. Those vessels are almost certainly screen vessels which will travel some miles in advance and in the rear of the vessel carrying the rocket. At various points they will turn this vessel over to another pair, if air searchers saw the same two ships going in the same direction the same distance apart for days on end they'd start getting suspicious."
"But-wait a moment, Captain, my mind-it's just about stopped." I wasn't joking at that, the heat of the sun and the fact that my wounds hadn't been treated since I'd been knocked about in the blockhouse made my head reel dizzily. "Yes. But what happens if some warship or aircraft does come on the scene. You can detect them with radar but you can't shoot them down with radar. What does the vessel with the Black Shrike do then?"
"It submerges," Griffiths said simply. "It will be a submarine, it's bound to be a submarine. Enlarge the loading hatch and practically any submarine in service could carry the Shrike in its for'ard torpedo room. The screen vessels will enable it to travel on the surface at top speed. If anything happens it just submerges and proceeds at much lower speeds. But it'll get there. A hundred naval ships equipped with Asdic could search for a year and never locate just one solitary sub loose in the Pacific. I think you can take it for granted, Bentall, that if that rocket leaves the island we will never see it again."
"Thank you very much, Captain Griffiths." No question, he had the final truth of it. I pushed myself wearily to my feet, like an old old man making his final attempt to leave his death-bed, tore the paper into pieces and let them fall on the thin sun-browned grass. I looked in the direction of the blockhouse and could see several figures just appearing from the back. Out at sea Fleck was coming in through the gap in the reef.
"One more request, Captain Griffiths. When LeClerc returns ask him if you and your men can remain out in the open for the remainder of the day, in the fresh air instead of baking in those corrugated iron huts. It's likely they'll soon start encasing the other rocket"-I pointed to the two twenty-foot steel boxes with the built in cradles in the hangar- "ready for shipment, and point out the fact that it would then need only one guard to look after you instead of the four or five required to watch the doors and windows if you're locked up in the huts, so releasing more of his men for the work. Give him your word there will be no trouble. If the test went well, he'll be in a good mood and likely to grant your request."
"Why do you want this, Bentall?" The dislike was back in his voice.
"I don't want LeClerc to see me talking to you. If you want to live, do as I say." I wandered aimlessly off to inspect the extent of the damage caused by the rocket leaving the launching pad. Two minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw LeClerc and Griffiths speaking to one another, and then LeClerc and Hewell came towards me. LeClerc was looking almost jovial, the way a man is apt to look when he sees his greatest dream coming true.
"So you didn't jinx it after all, did you, Bentall?" He obviously didn't want to embarrass me by showing too much gratitude for the job I'd done.
"No, I didn't jinx it." But I'll jinx the other one, Mr. LeClerc, oh, brother, how 111 jinx the other one. "Successful?"