Mr Ackroyd, praying to his Maker for more strength, began to do it.
It had been the man who’d been driving who had had the thing, Mr Ackroyd thought shakily — he remembered the woman giving it to him. Mr Ackroyd, with difficulty, dragged his body upright, leant over the driving-seat. When he saw that shattered, squeezed body that hung dead on the steering column Mr Ackroyd felt very sick and giddy for a bit, and then forced himself to go on. He reached down and went through the pockets, groped through the oozing blood which was starting to congeal now where the metal bar had entered the man’s body, felt then for the wallet in the breast-pocket which the steering-column had only just missed. He drew out the wallet, felt something hard in the folds of the soft, sleek leather.
Utterly exhausted, Mr Ackroyd flopped back in the seat and closed his eyes, the pain from his arm sparking into his body. It was some minutes before he found the strength to open the wallet. When he did so he found tucked down the back pocket a thin, flat strip of metal with a hole in one end and a convex half-circle at the other. It was a delicate piece of work, almost wafer-thin, and the semicircular end had little teeth beautifully worked, very tiny and very even — sharp little teeth which were made to engage in another piece of metal. Mr Ackroyd felt those teeth, and gave an odd little, dry cackle. It was important, was that bit of metal, but Mr Ackroyd still couldn’t remember why, couldn’t for the life of him remember… and perhaps it didn’t matter very much now after all, for the woman hadn’t got it, which was the important thing; and as for Mr Ackroyd himself, he was assuredly going to die. No man could go on living in such pain.
Mr Ackroyd gave a dry, choking sob as he thought about his death like that, and then he started humming again. Dum-da, dum-da, dum-da — it did cheer him up a little, that refrain, somehow brought him close to a necessary part of his life. His head seemed to float away from him, up into those lantern-like stars above the little town of Vercín, and he thought confusedly of Liverpool and Mrs Ackroyd and Annie and Ernie Spinner and such a lot of things like that. And as he sat and thought, and hummed at intervals, and clutched his little piece of metal with the sharp teeth — the little piece of metal that would have made things right in Gibraltar within five minutes — a group of shadowy forms led by a guardia straggled down the steep, rocky track from the walls of Vercín.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In Gibraltar very few knew the truth. Very few knew, but a good many heard vague rumours of untoward things, and they sniffed the air and were not happy. Very few knew, but many put two and two together; none of their guesses made four, but a few intelligent persons in official circles made very good shots indeed — but because they were intelligent people they kept these guesses to themselves, and did not start to spread the half-truths which would undoubtedly have led to a panic.
All the same, vague, half-defined whispers did go round the town and the garrison, and a general atmosphere of unrest soon became apparent, a nasty wordless feeling that all was not well, and that something rather dreadful might be going to happen. The comings and goings at the Governor’s residence at The Convent, at The Mount, where the Flag Officer lived, at the Tower in the dockyard, and in the City Council chambers and the Legislative Council building— this all helped the rumour-mongering. It was, of course, inevitable. The Yacht Club buzzed; officers and men of visiting ships felt the difference in the atmosphere of the Rock from last time they’d been in. In the Garrison Library members tended to talk in whispers — whispers which died away as newcomers joined the little groups, and then started up again. It was the same in the hotels.
H.M.S. Cambridge was moved and berthed beneath the Tower; that for a cruiser was sufficiently unusual in itself, in all the circumstances, to give fresh life to the rumours.
The brass was alarmed about something, that was clear enough. A few voices, loud ones, were raised against ‘all this secrecy’; but, except for these few voices, Gibraltar’s 24,000 odd inhabitants — Service, civilian, and local — trusted their Governor and Commander-in-Chief.
Which trust Sir Francis Hammersley found very sustaining — but at the same time worrying, and very humbling.
General Hammersley had had barely four hours sleep since Shaw had crossed into Spain, and that was now more than thirty-six hours ago. During that time no word of Shaw, or of any progress, had reached Gibraltar.
Tired, Hammersley tapped out his pipe in a gleaming copper ash-tray on the polished leather top of his desk. His eyes were red-rimmed, his uniform crumpled and clammy. He seemed to have aged quite a lot in these last two days of supreme (and supremely lonely) responsibility. It weighed very heavily upon him that so many men, women, and children depended for their lives upon his handling of a unique situation, depended upon his accurate, or otherwise, assessment of the chances. For, of course, there would come a time when he would no longer be justified in waiting for Shaw to achieve something: there would come a moment when catastrophe would be certain to occur within a short time after, and there would then be no further point in maintaining secrecy. The explosion which would send the Rock hurtling down on the town to crush its inhabitants to a frightful death would also end Project Sinker and everything connected with it. And when that moment came it would be up to Hammersley to recognize it, and to order the immediate evacuation of Gibraltar in an attempt to get as many people off the Rock as possible before the end came.
Hammersley drew a hand heavily across his forehead, found a sticky cold sweat there.
It seemed to him at times that the scramble line to London hadn’t been idle for a minute since the first word of Ackroyd’s disappearance had been flashed to Whitehall. Counter-proposal followed proposal, and refusal followed counter-proposal; and the tense voices of Whitehall and Downing Street drummed into General Hammersley’s ears, and those of other high-ranking officers holding responsible positions; and in the end something of a scheme had been thrashed out.
When and if that moment, that point, as it were, of no return, should appear to be in sight — and it was left entirely to Hammersley to say when that was; the action signal was his alone to give — all entries to Gibraltar would at once be prohibited, and a number of complicated movements would be set in motion under the collective code-name of Exercise Convoy, which, when the evacuation actually started, would be stepped up to Operation Convoy. In the first place, upon the Gibraltar Governor’s Most Immediate call to London, the liner Queen Elizabeth—at this moment, as Hammersley refilled his pipe in his office, leaving New York for Southampton via Le Havre — would increase to her maximum emergency speed, land her passengers and all excess catering staff at Plymouth, and steam flat out for Gibraltar, where she would anchor in the Bay and immediately take off evacuees from tenders. The Queen Mary was unfortunately undergoing refit, and was therefore not available; but the Queen Elizabeth could be backed up if necessary by the Orient liner Orsova, which, homeward bound from Sydney, was already well into the Mediterranean, and might be ordered to disembark her passengers at Naples and proceed at full speed into Algeciras Bay; while the P. and O. Company’s Stratheden, also inward bound from Sydney, was due to enter the Mediterranean shortly — though at the moment she was awaiting Canal entry at Port Tewfik, and would therefore probably be too late. A host of small shipping, all that happened to be near at hand when the signals went out, could be given diversionary orders as necessary; the big troop-carriers of R.A.F. Transport Command, backed up by B.O.A.C. and B.E.A., would be alerted to start a continuous shuttle-service from Gibraltar’s airport; the British Mediterranean Fleet in Malta had sealed orders, dispatched by air to the Commander-in-Chief, which would be opened on a signal from the Admiralty if necessary. Meanwhile the warships — an aircraft-carrier, two cruisers, and smaller vessels — were being held at immediate notice for steam, the official reason being that they might be required to take part in the big exercise in Royal Navy and Merchant Service co-operation to be known as Exercise Convoy; so that, if Shaw should bring his mission to a successful conclusion in the meantime, secrecy would not have been needlessly jeopardized.