As the cupboard-elevator travelled quietly up again, the man with the accent asked, ‘Commander Shaw?’
Shaw stared at him. ‘If I wasn’t, your tame thugs would have slipped up rather badly, wouldn’t they?’ he answered bitterly. ‘You, I suppose, are Rudolf Fleck, phoney attorney.’
‘Ah — not exactly!’ The man smiled. His face was a self-confident one — arrogant, supercilious, but strong — almost handsome because of its strength, striking because of the latent power it held. It was a face that fitted well enough with Patricia O’Malley’s summary of the man. The mouth was thin, looked thinner than in fact it was because the face was broad and flat. The smile — it was little more than a twist of those thin lips — only made it acid. He inclined his head. ‘I am Rudolf Fleck, at your service. But there is nothing phoney about my practice as an attorney. This is cover, yes — but it is genuine cover. I’m well known in New York State, as well as on Manhattan itself.’ He looked beyond Shaw and spoke crisply. ‘All right, Willoughby.’
Willoughby opened a door, and Shaw followed him into the most amazing place he had ever seen in all his life.
Shaw could hardly believe his eyes.
This was opulence — and also, no doubt, potential extreme danger to U.S security — far below the surface of Brooklyn and under the Frazer Harfield Packaging Corporation’s offices and warehouses. From that lobby Shaw had stepped into an air-conditioned, thick-carpeted corridor, where all sounds were muted, and where there was a curious pressure on the eardrums. From here they passed into a superbly equipped communications centre with big, powerful radio receivers — and also, oddly for a secret hideaway such as this, powerful long-range transmitters, which Shaw would have thought over-susceptible to monitoring and tracking down. Three men sat in front of the receiving sets with earphones clamped to their heads and pencils busy on pads of paper, and Shaw caught the faint sounds of messages coming through in morse. This apart, the room was utterly silent. They moved across a thick cork floor-covering and went out into a private office beyond, an office as opulent, as tasteful, as Latymer’s back in London’s Admiralty. The air in this office was fresh and sweet with a smell of meadows, no doubt due to the dispersal of some chemical vapour through the air-conditioning plant; and there was even a fake window, looking out on to a painted panoramic landscape, lit by an electric ‘sun.’
Fleck asked, ‘Before we get down to business, perhaps you’d like to be shown around the rest of our operations base.’ Not waiting for an answer, he led the way through another door into the corridor again. Several rooms opened off this passage. One of them was a mess-room, with a long table and a dozen or so chairs ranged along it at either side, with comfortable, upholstered chairs at the end of the room, in front of a small bar. One or two men were sitting around in these easy chairs, reading; they jumped to their feet when Fleck appeared, and stood at attention.
Fleck inclined his head. He said, ‘Carry on, gentlemen, please. I am not coming in just now.’ He shut the door and they went on again, along that thick, expensive carpet. Passing one room, a bedroom with the door ajar, Shaw glanced in briefly. There was a girl — quite a young girl, blonde and strikingly pretty — sitting semi-nude on a bed and looking at herself in a mirror… she glanced up as Shaw passed, and caught his eye. There was a curious look in her face, an enigmatic and somewhat startled look, which he couldn’t interpret, and then they had passed along and he heard her door snap shut. In a big store-room at the end of the passage there was a vast water-tank and stacks of food — tins, cartons, and jars — which put Shaw in mind of the food stocks aboard the floating dock. It was a fantastic set-up. There were lavatories, well-appointed bathrooms, wash-places, more bedrooms for what Fleck called his senior staff, and dormitories for the lower grades.
‘Lower grades of what?’ Shaw asked. ‘What is all this for, Fleck?’
‘Never mind what it is for… enough that you know, my dear Shaw, that it is quite impregnable, that you can never hope to get out of it by yourself, and that outside of here no one even remotely suspects its existence.’
‘No one?’
‘Except some of our own people, of course, who have to know.’
‘Which includes the bosses of Frazer Harfield, naturally. Aren’t you afraid they might have the screw put on them?’
Fleck looked mildly surprised, the eyebrows lifting slightly in the self-confident face. ‘Why should they have? No one suspects… that is our strength, you see. No one knows anything about us, Commander Shaw, and even of those dedicated ones who live and work down here, few know our plans in their entirety. And only myself and, when necessary, Willoughby and Cassidy have left this strongpoint since work commenced down here. Certain of the Frazer Harfield bosses, as you call them, have our ideas, but they do not know what we are going to do… nor, of course, how we mean to do it. So far as the firm’s staff are concerned, we are specialist employees engaged upon research into packaging methods. They know nothing of this place, nothing at all. As at present used, I mean, of course. It was excavated as a deep shelter after Pearl Harbour, and then never used.’ Fleck smiled. ‘All this is clear?’
‘As mud.’
‘Which I do not propose to make less muddy, my dear fellow. Come.’ Fleck put a friendly hand on his arm and led him back to the office behind the radio room. The German went towards a big desk and sat himself down in a swivel-chair behind it, nodded at Willoughby, who frisked Shaw quickly and emptied his pockets of everything — including his identity card. After this Willoughby and Cassidy sat themselves in comfortable armchairs facing the desk. Shaw was left standing.
Fleck leaned back and said, ‘Well, Shaw, I’ve no doubt you’re surprised at all this…’
‘I’d like to know the purpose of it all, then I might be able to appreciate it more.’
Fleck chuckled. ‘No doubt! However, I do not propose to tell you, I’m afraid. It’s most unlikely — indeed impossible — that you will get away from here, but I take no chances, you see — that is why I am successful, no doubt. Am I right, Willoughby?’
Willoughby shifted his big body. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said. ‘Dead right.’
Fleck smiled slightly and then went on, ‘I’ve sent for you, Shaw, because after you had spotted Hanson, the tail, I had no option but to have you brought in. You see, after that you were too dangerous to leave around… especially, of course, after you had mentioned my name to him.’
‘How did you know I was on the job, Fleck?’
‘No comment. I—’
‘What do you know about a girl called Patricia O’Malley, Fleck?’
‘No comment.’ Fleck’s eyes narrowed and he spoke harshly. ‘My dear fellow, I ask the questions here — not you! And there are things I need to know, and mean to know. You are going to tell me those things or rather you will tell Willoughby and Cassidy. I’m leaving you to them now, Shaw.’
‘And you?’
‘I?’ Fleck looked up and smiled slightly, a gleam coming into his eyes. ‘I shall be busy elsewhere, I’m afraid, but I hope very much that we shall meet again later on. Whether or not we do, depends on how you answer those questions.’ He paused, fiddled with a pen. ‘Willoughby has his orders, Shaw. He will carry them out to the letter. I would advise you most strongly to tell him everything that passed between you and Admiral Pullman in the Pentagon.’
‘You’ll be lucky!’ Shaw snapped.
Fleck looked beyond him and noddd. That was when it started. There was a tiny click behind Shaw and a flick-knife pressed into the small of his back, right through his clothing. Willoughby’s voice said pleasantly, ‘I don’t want to have to use this for real, but if I do… well, it’ll be just too bad. Now just turn around and come with us, h’m?’