MacKail’s face was murderous. ‘Why give ’em any warning? Hell… they won’t give us any time at all! Once they start to transmit it’ll be too late—’
‘No! It’s not that way at all. They’ve several preliminary transmissions to make first, while they track the missile and cut out the various controls. It’s a close schedule certainly, but we’ll have quite enough warning if we’re close up and have our guns ready for instant shooting.’
‘But — why, for God’s sake. What’s the goddam point?’
‘This: I’d like to take the Moehne back to the States as a gift for Admiral Pullman!’ Shaw gave a tight grin. ‘To say nothing of Fleck and Schillenhorst, whose brains could be well worth the picking before they get what’s coming to them. Besides, there’s another point. If we can bring this off without letting it all blow up into an international shooting-match, so much the better. They were going to bomb the ships, I know — all right! The point is, they didn’t in the end and now we have a chance of handling it differently. But if we sink the Moehne on the high seas before they’ve actually done anything to interfere with the test — well, in my opinion we’ll be heading into the trickiest situation we’ve ever faced.’
‘Yeah?’ MacKail stared bleakly. ‘Nuts, who’s going to worry about what the hell happens to a lousy bunch of Nazis?’
‘Other Nazis, just to quote an example — undercover men, agents provocateurs, who’ll stir up real trouble if they get the chance. And don’t forget the cold war’s still on. There could be trouble from all sorts of quarters if we jump the gun.’
‘Sure, maybe, but what’s that in the balance against what’s going to happen to the States—’
Shaw broke in, ‘It wouldn’t be anywhere at all, Captain—if there wasn’t a better alternative to what you propose. But there is — and there’s just no point in stirring up hornets’ nests if you don’t have to!’
‘But look… Chile and the Argentine won’t arrest that ship, you say it’s too tricky to blow her up on the high seas… where the goddam hell are we?’ MacKail was looking sour and bewildered still, but, Shaw fancied, more amenable as his mind began to take over from his feelings. ‘What is the alternative? Assuming you want to take ’em in the end whatever happens, you—’
‘You do it with mirrors,’ Shaw said with a grin. ‘Look. You talk about Chile and the Argentine and the high seas… but if the Moehne stays on this course, she’ll pass the 58th parallel pretty soon. We’re well south after all this steaming. Well — once she does that, she’s no longer on the high seas, is she?’
MacKail looked puzzled. ‘Come again?’
‘She’s in British Antarctic waters! Follow? It’s splitting hairs, I know, but it’s a point. I’m prepared to give myself a bump up and say I’m the representative of the British Government on the spot, and arrest her — with the help of your guns, Captain MacKail! There’ll be no come-backs then, because I’ll trump up some nice little charge, like… well—’
‘Like spitting on the sidewalk?’ MacKail was getting friendlier.
Shaw grinned back at him. ‘You’ve got the idea! Then if they resist arrest — well, that’s their look-out, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose… and afterwards?’
‘Afterwards we take her into a U.S port under a boarding-party. Then we do the sorting out.’
MacKail nodded. Then he laughed. He said scathingly, ‘You limeys! You can’t do a goddam thing unless it’s in the book, but I guess maybe you could be right. I see your point. Okay, we’ll play it your way, Commander, for a start anyhow.’ He looked round and jerked his head at a communicator. ‘Son, make to the German: You are to ease right down consistent with safe navigation and maintain strict radio silence or I shall blow you out of the water at the very first bleep.’
A moment later a big lamp began stabbing the general call-up letters across the foaming seas. It was five minutes before the distant answering light flicked back in acknowledgement, and then the message itself was sent out from the cruiser.
The reply came quickly: If I agree will you spare our lives.
MacKail’s answer to that was even briefer. It just said: No promises. Ten minutes later the North Dakota had closed the Moehne appreciatively. MacKail turned to Shaw. He said, ‘That bastard’s got something up his sleeve, I guess. He’s giving in just a shade too easily.’
‘Perhaps.’ Shaw shrugged, rubbed at his chin-stubble. ‘But I think it’s more a case of him not having any alternative and knowing it.’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, that’s not to say he won’t try to transmit. I—’
‘I’ll be watching that,’ MacKail said briefly.
Away up north on Canaveral the preliminaries were well in hand. The big Warmaster missile had been hoisted on its seating from the underground silo and was now elevated into the firing position, sticking up from the launching-pad like some grotesquely finned factory chimney of enormous girth. It was the biggest thing bar none yet to be seen on the missile range. It was vast and black and shiny, and it was sinister with its brood of smaller missiles nestling as yet in that huge thermo-nuclear womb. At this stage there could be no further secrecy about a test as such; only the functions, the identity, and the sheer power of Warmaster were as yet unadmitted.
In control stations and check-points all around the site, as the count-down started, men were bending over dials and instruments and listening through headphones. Orders and reports came in, and were passed on to other parts of the range. Dials were moved, levers pulled over. There was an air of tremendously tense expectancy such as had never previously been known at Cape Canaveral — where every test was approached, as it were, with bated breath. But there had never been anything like Warmaster before, and all concerned with her first full-scale test were almost pathologically anxious for that test to be a one hundred per cent success. Warmaster was to be the pinnacle of deterrent power and everyone wished her well. This was, then, no routine test. Warmaster was all on her own — proud, imperious, infinitely powerful, infinitely majestic — and infinitely terrible.
As each man made his contribution to that launching, the minutes and the seconds ticked away. Reports filtered back to one man in a high tower some distance off, a tower that overlooked the whole of the range area; and just before the last report reached this man, he wiped sweat from the palms of his hands and grabbed a telephone.
He wasn’t in the least surprised to find that his hands were shaking and that when he spoke his voice was high, strained, and unnatural.
He said, ‘Get me the Pentagon. Yes, Admiral Clifford Pullman. That’s right.’ As he waited, his lips seemed to be moving in prayer. Then there was a click in his ear and he started a little. He said, ‘Pullman? Canaveral here… yes, Johnson, that’s correct. Admiral, it’s All Systems Go.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fleck was on the Moehne’s bridge when the North Dakota’s signal lamp was read. Turning to Lindrath, he said, ‘Send to Doctor Schillenhorst, Captain. Warn him of what the American cruiser says, but tell him also that there is no change in the plan, none at all.’
‘But—’
Fleck made a furious gesture. His broad, flat face was contorted, almost devilish with deep lines cut on either side of his nose and mouth; he was consumed, it seemed, with impatience and nerves now. He said, ‘There are no “buts,” Captain Lindrath! Dr Schillenhorst is to have all his instruments lined up and he is to track the missile from the moment of launching and making his cutting-out transmissions exactly as ordered! I do not propose to be intimidated by the cruiser.’