The defensive measures were already getting into gear. Not one minute was being lost.
As the Piccadilly Line tube-train rattled Shaw westward beneath Hyde Park Corner for Baron’s Court, a convoy of Army lorries rolled up Constitution Hill carrying a Guards’ detachment from Wellington Barracks. That detachment had been trained in missile-launching and behind them came a vast vehicle from the back of which protruded the long blunt snout of a mobile rocket-launching platform. The workaday crowds looked with casual curiosity at this contraption, scarcely giving the troops themselves a second glance. Two or three small boys displayed more detailed interest and that was all. The whole procession had been forgotten as soon as it had moved on. Those people didn’t realize, and if Shaw was successful they never would realize, that the signals that were responsible, among other things, for that detachment’s journey, had gone out scarcely one hour before from the War Office and the Air Ministry and the Admiralty, on the personal authority of the Prime Minister. Those urgent, top-priority and most secret signals had gone to all naval, military, and air commands and they read: Exercise Repel Boarders. Stand by for action alert. And in isolated sites widely dispersed about the British Isles from Kent and Sussex and Hampshire up to Inverness and Sutherland and the Outer Hebrides, the long, menacing fingers of the missiles were by now lined up on their targets thousands of miles away. In the Clyde, officers of the United States Navy were already watching while the Polaris-carrying submarines were fully stored up for long patrols and in all respects made ready for sea. Within hours those submarines would proceed, for all the public would know, on just one more exercise, but this time they would not come back until the flap was over; and their journey would take them out through the Cumbraes and beyond Arran and Ailsa Craig, north round the Mull of Kintyre or south past The Rhinns and the Mull of Galloway, there to submerge and proceed to their action-stations, the firing-positions from which their searching weapons could when necessary flash their way into the Eastern land mass. There was as yet four days to go before the arrival of the
Foreign Ministers but the West was not going to be caught with its pants down.
That night Shaw was driven in a fast, closed car down the Mall for London Airport. Feeling for the Webley .38 in its shoulder-holster, he looked out at the ordinary sights of London and her people. As always in the early stages, he had been gripped by his old feelings of inadequacy; he knew he would rise above them later on, and he knew too that he had to bring this job off if it was the last one he ever did in his life. Failure must not even be considered. He was still looking out of the window as the car swept past the Palace. This was a journey he knew well; it seldom varied when he was starting an assignment that involved an overseas posting. But this time, since it involved a penetration of the Russian enigma, it was subtly different.
Four
The telephone in Shaw’s luxurious bedroom in the Hotel Metropole buzzed into his subconscious and when he lifted the handset a voice, speaking English with a Viennese accent, said, “Mr Alison?”
“Speaking.” He was wide awake at once.
“Good morning, Mr Alison. I apologize for telephoning you so early, but I am to inform you that Herr Prakesh’s car will be at your hotel at ten o’clock.”
“Right, I—”
There was a click in his ear and he jammed the receiver back. Prakesh was his contact. He rubbed the remainder of his sleep from his eyes and stretched, flexing his muscles. He had checked in at the Metropole in the early hours, tired and edgy after the flight and a concentrated session with Carberry at the Admiralty. Sleep hadn’t come for a long time, for he was conscious all the while of the shortness of days. It was a pity, he felt, that he wouldn’t have Debonnair’s assistance this time — for one thing he was very fond of the girl and for another she would have been invaluable if he could have left her to nose around in Vienna after he had moved on… her former Foreign Office background meant that she could be trusted by Latymer and because of her training and experience she had often been useful in the past. On the Gibraltar job, for instance, she’d been with him nearly all the way, and she had given him very valuable help in the early stages of the assignments that had led him, at other times, to Australia and West Africa. Currently, however, she’d been sent out to Australia herself on a job for her bosses in Eastern Petroleum — damn their eyes! But they, after all, paid the girl her magnificent salary, so he could scarcely tell them what to do with the job…
A moment later he pushed the sheet right off and put his feet down into thick pile. Walking over to the window he stepped on to a balcony and looked out at the city. Below him, Vienna was waking up to another day and everything looked ordinary and calm; this old city had seen so much trouble in its time, had only started to settle down when the occupation forces had been withdrawn in 1955. Now, like the rest of the world, it deserved its peace.
Turning away with a faint breeze ruffling his hair, Shaw returned to the room. He went into his bathroom and had a shave and a steaming hot bath. After that he felt fine but, as always, he disliked the waiting period. He could never get properly settled down until the action started. When he was dressed he rang for breakfast, which was brought up to him by a pretty, dark-eyed waitress who looked him up and down, provocatively and with frank approval. At his request she laid a table for him out on the balcony. He enjoyed the crisp rolls and excellent coffee and when he had finished he sat back with a cigarette and listened to the faint street sounds coming up to him, and sniffed the keen Austrian air appreciatively.
This was the calm before the storm, was almost certainly the last time for many days that he would be able to sit about and luxuriate like this.
He was going to make the most of it.
At 9.45 he rang down to reception and said he was expecting a car to call for him in fifteen minutes and he would be in the lounge. Then, after taking routine precautions with his gear, he went downstairs and settled himself behind a newspaper in a comfortable chair until he heard himself being paged. He got up then and went across to the reception-desk and found a blue-uniformed chauffeur waiting for him, cap in hand.
The man asked, “Herr Alison?”
“Yes”
“I am Herr Prakesh’s chauffeur, at your service, Herr Alison.”
Shaw nodded and the man turned about. Shaw followed him across the foyer and down the steps, casually but with his right hand inside the lapel of his double-breasted grey suit, all ready to slide round the butt of his Webley, as the chauffeur opened the door of a big black Mercedes. You could never be sure of anything in this game. Inside the car he saw a monkey-faced little man grinning at him, a dark little man in a city suit and a high white collar. He let his hand fall to his side then; Carberry had shown him a photograph and he recognized Wolfgang Prakesh right away.
Prakesh said, “Ah, Mr Alison. How nice to see you. Please get in.”
Shaw smiled back at him and climbed in, sinking into soft upholstery. The chauffeur shut the door and ran round to his glass-enclosed compartment. As the Mercedes moved out into the stream of traffic the little man said politely, “I hope you enjoy your stay, Mr Alison. I thought perhaps you would like a drive on a fine morning, to see something of our countryside before you begin work.”