Philip McCutchan
The Dead Line
Chapter One
The body was naked and it was propped up on the open vehicle by a wooden structure that sagged sideways under the dead weight of flesh and bone as the lorry took the corner. Some distance beyond lay the saluting base, in a courtyard that had been swept clean in the early morning by children with brooms. The body smelt; the hot Asian sun had seen to that — had been seeing to it for the last couple of hours at least. When the corpse had been discharged from the freighter’s hold at Tsingtao it had still been in its lead container. That container had held it hermetically sealed all along the sea route from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and on again from there to Tsingtao on the mainland of Communist China, thence by air to Peking. But now that it had been taken from its container and had met the open air, time was catching up on it.
Four powerful Negroes — huge, muscular men dressed only in cotton trousers — guarded the corpse as it followed behind the marching soldiers and the armour and the enormous nuclear missiles. The Negroes sweated, their shining black skins resembling those of seals that had just emerged from the water. Below them, behind a cordon of police and troops and girls of the Young Militia, the crowds of over-stimulated Chinese comrades waved fists and banners at the corpse as it lurched and shook on its horrible journey towards the dais where the top brass waited.
Above the corpse was a vast placard, standing out like a square sail; this placard was inscribed front and rear with Chinese characters that read: this is the body of one of our notorious enemies, an american politician, a negro-hater and persecutor who was killed and brought from the west because of his many crimes against the negro people and for his speeches against their chinese comrades whom he accused of oppression and slavery in their own country.
As this prime piece of ballyhoo flaunted itself before the myriad eyes there was a groan from the crowd, a baying sound that rose to a crescendo as the vehicle neared the dais. As they passed it, the four Negroes received clenched-fist salutes from the assembled brass, the new War Lords of Red China. This in itself was significant, for the Chinese were accustomed to think of men with black skins as being, aesthetically, the most revolting of all peoples; but Communist dogma was overriding aestheticism. An order was snapped and a tall Chinese carrying an axe leaped up on the lorry’s platform. There was a hush as he lifted the axe and then, as the shining blade flashed down and in one stroke sliced the gruesome body into ragged halves, the baying sound was taken up again, hundreds of thousands of throats giving threatening voice to their constantly fed detestation of the West and all it stood for.
With the remains of the cloven body hanging over the sides, the lorry moved on in rear of the military parade of strength.
The rangy man with the hard, tanned body, sitting on the terrace of the Royal West Cornwall Yacht Club and drinking Scotch, lowered his newspaper as a white-jacketed steward approached him. The steward said deferentially, “Commander Shaw, sir.”
Shaw looked up. “Yep?”
“Telephone, sir. From London. A Mr Latymer.”
“Damn,” Shaw said briefly. He reached for his glass. “Just remind him I’m on leave, will you, Reckitt… but no, on second thoughts, don’t do anything so rash. I’ll be right along.”
“Very good, sir.” The man turned away. Shaw let out a long breath of irritation and looked seaward. Just an hour before he’d been a fairish way out there, off Newquay… right where the North Atlantic rollers boomed and roared as they swept in from fresh green deeps to enter the comparatively narrow seas between the Tuskar and the Wolf, then to roll in long, inexorable lines of foam-topped wave to wash the shores of the West Country. Now that he was fit again, he had been enjoying himself thoroughly, with no thought of work for another ten days at least… and now — Latymer was on the line from London. Latymer wouldn’t bother an agent on leave, especially sick leave, just to remind him to clean his gun, so it was good-bye to the jet-black tunic of sorbo-rubber that, the first time he had worn it, had so intrigued him with its plebeian air of playing at Mods and Rockers; good-bye to the Maribu boards, those aerodynamic shapes of polystrene foam and cloth that had carried him at exhilaratingly high speeds as he had hot-dogged it time and again across the wave crests, praying to Huey, the surfers’ God, to produce the rare magic, tearing in zig-zag fashion for the beach where the Emmetts, as the surfers called those miserable people outside the sport, were lying in the sun. That hot-dogging had been daring for a Gremmie — strictly he was still classifiable as a Gremmie after a mere six or seven months’ intermittent practice, never mind that in those months he’d easily outclassed the experts — and it had been just what was needed to restore his speed and judgement in emergency, get his reactions and reflexes fighting fit again. Almost unconsciously now he felt for the trade marks of the sport, marks which he carried already — a couple of welts a few inches below the knee, a couple of bumps on the foot behind the big toe, marks instantly recognizable to fellow surfers and their Wahinis — the girls who rode the Maribu boards with them — or to the bikini-clad beach bunnies who preferred to stay on the sands and wait for their more adventurous boy-friends to come back from the foam… the beach bunnies who had been eyeing Shaw every day he’d been in Newquay, watching him come in from the sea, watching him with something like hunger in their faces… watching him as he strode, tall and rangy and hard with the wind and sun drying his darkly tanned skin and the crisp brown hair, bleached now by many weeks of that sun to a burnished gold. Maybe they were intrigued by the line of bullet scars, the entry marks in his back and the exits in the side of his chest — testimony to his luck that they had all missed the vital organs, testimony to his hard endurance in pulling through a rough patch.
He stood up.
He was still in swimming briefs but in deference to the R.W.C.Y.C.’s staider members he had put on a loose blue beach shirt. It didn’t hide his muscle or the firm flesh of his thighs and calves, nor the brand-new fitness and health he had acquired. He strode off the terrace and made for the telephone kiosk in the hall of the clubhouse. He picked up the handpiece and said, “Good morning, sir. Shaw here… sorry to have kept you—”
The voice broke in coldly — it was metallic, rattling against Shaw’s eardrums like steel filings. “Cut the trimmings, Shaw, there isn’t time. You’re wanted and you’re wanted now.”
“Can you tell me what for, sir?”
The voice snapped back irritably, “You’re not paid for asking damfool questions.” Almost as an afterthought it inquired, “Fit?”
“For anything, unfortunately—”
“Good. Then climb into that Mercedes you’ve just splashed half a year’s salary on, and get here as fast as she’ll bring you. I’m having the route cleared for you right the way along the A30.”
The phone clicked in Shaw’s ear.
He shrugged and slammed the receiver down and went along to the changing-room. He lit a Perfectos Finos. Weeks of pain followed by weeks of leisure plus a growing disillusionment with abstention had put him back on the cigarettes again — but now it was nothing but the best. Five minutes later he was taking the Mercedes out of the car park and heading her east for the A30 into London. When Latymer said now, he meant just that.
Chapter Two
The Mercedes was a fast model and Shaw drove her hard. He had only recently taken delivery of the car; he wasn’t aware that Latymer knew a thing about it, but Latymer, it seemed, knew even the registration number — which all went to show that agents were never really on leave at all.