‘The code didn’t seem to give your people much trouble, did it?’
‘Once they spotted it was the Bible, no. People not brought up on it aren’t so likely to do that, of course. Also the Russian Bible isn’t the English one — different book names, I believe, and some other kind of ordering for chapter and verse. In any case, belt and braces. He’s a careful fellow.’
‘Hmm.’ Lazenby mused again. ‘Send him a man,’ he said. ‘How send him a man?’
‘Well, the American view there —’
‘What American view?’
‘He wants answering on the Voice of America. Radio station. The Americans run it … Anyway, their view is, find the man and you have probably found the how. He will know how.’
‘You don’t think it would be more sensible for him to send some cigarette papers to that man?’
‘I do. Much more sensible,’ Philpott agreed. ‘It leads to a view either that he doesn’t know where that man is or doubts that he has your contacts.’
‘Nobody to show cigarette papers to?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Yes.’ Lazenby gazed again at the papers. It was plain that any question he cared to put would meet with a ready answer. There were some other questions but he decided not to put them. The River Spey awaited in a few days, and nothing — in particular nothing as crazy as this showed signs of being — was going to interfere with it.
‘Might I ask, Prof,’ asked Philpott, ‘if I could get at your archive right away? Spread the load — if you had no objection.’
‘I would have every objection. Of course you can’t, Philpott.’
‘Ah … Miss Sonntag, then?’
‘I’ll ask her. What is it you want exactly?’
‘Anything from the men on this list. We think he must be one of them.’
‘Why?’
‘They have all had some contact with you at one time or another. And they are now all out of circulation. They aren’t hospitalised, not over this period of time. They haven’t retired. Not drawing pension, at any rate. And they’re not dead, barring a couple of doubtful cases. Almost certainly they are working at something.’
‘Yes. Who says all this?’
‘The Americans. Far and away the best at it,’ Philpott said, nodding. ‘And with an outstanding biographical department — exceedingly detailed and current. For instance, they know the locations and the senior staff of all establishments in the business of — well, in various kinds of business. This man is not at any of them. He must be at some other, which they don’t know about. And that bothers them. It bothers them very much. They want to liaise on it urgently, the moment we have something to show.’
‘Yes. I see,’ Lazenby said, frowning. What he principally saw was a time-waster of prodigious proportions here, if allowed to develop.
‘Can Miss Sonntag get at it right away?’
‘I will certainly ask her.’
‘It’s a matter of the greatest urgency. There is another question. Has something like this ever happened before — that is, some other envelope that has turned up with apparently nothing in it? It probably wouldn’t have been from Gothenburg. More likely Rotterdam or Hamburg, Rotterdam the likeliest.’
‘I could ask that, too. Why?’
‘I can’t tell you that now. I will as soon as I am authorised — together with a great deal of other information. Of course, if you have any thoughts yourself, Prof, I hope you will contact me right away.’
‘Certainly, certainly, Philpott,’ Lazenby said, and allowed the subject to drift at once out of his mind. There would not be any other thoughts, he was quite clear on that. Secret codes, unknown establishments … All that, they could get on with very well by themselves.
And this, as a matter of fact, they were doing.
3
The unknown establishment was assumed to be biological and its work to do with military biology. This was the first point of interest for the CIA and at their headquarters in Langley, eight miles from Washington, a team of specialists was engaged in hunting it down.
They started by assuming that it must have independent sources of water and power; also chemical stores, animal pens, cleansing stations, and various kinds of security arrangements. All this needed people, and places for them to live, and some means of access, probably a landing strip. Above all, it needed isolation.
The ‘waste howling wilderness’ of the ‘north country’, evidently Siberia, remained even in modern times unmatched for isolation. Its forested area alone was one and a third times the size of the United States. Over the land lay deep snow and ice all winter, and quaking bogs in summer. This made for a road system so rudimentary that transport went mainly by air or river, with access to security areas available only on official permit.
This provided the first problem. If the place was so hard to get at, why should the unknown correspondent suppose anyone from outside could get at it? Just as important, how had he got anything out of it himself?
Specialists in global transportation put up a possible answer to this. The Siberian inland waterway system was very extensive. Two rivers in the north-west alone, the Ob and the Yenisei, had some dozens of ports with several others under construction. The reason for this was the extension of the huge natural gas deposit, the biggest in the world, which lay between the two rivers. As Russian oil production declined, the gas was due to replace it, both for internal energy and for external trade. For both purposes the product was urgently needed; and as satellite observation showed work was going on round the clock to get it.
To finance the project (which included a tunnel to west Europe 3000 miles long), massive foreign loans had been negotiated. The loans would be repaid in gas and were being supplied in the form of equipment. The amount of equipment was staggering. Apart from the rigs and drilling gear, there was all the piping to go inside the tunnel. There were giant compressors and pumping stations at intervals along it. There were thousands of earth-moving machines, tens of thousands of tractors.
In the lively scramble for orders, western shipping companies had not been backward. The equipment for the original field had been carried largely by ships of the old Soviet Union, but for the new deal the managing consortium had specified that new equipment, wherever possible, should be transported in vessels of the countries supplying it.
The countries supplying the new equipment were Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Holland. Ships from all of them were now ferrying loads along the Arctic sea route. Russian icebreakers were guaranteeing the route from early June to early October, the latter date varying with the ice pack: a fact that led the experts to a prediction.
It was now the first week of July, and the ice was building early. The prediction was that nothing could be expected from the unknown correspondent after the end of August. Western shippers, reluctant to hazard their vessels even in a ‘guaranteed’ September, were handing this slice of business to Russia’s own merchant fleet. It was not thought that a member of this fleet had posted the message. A foreign seaman, more familiar with foreign ports, and with greater privacy to fiddle with ambiguous cigarettes, had done it. He would not therefore be doing it after August.
But this raised other questions.
The ports opened to the foreign vessels were Dudinka and Igarka on the Yenisei, and Noviy Port and Salekhard on the Ob. Because they were guaranteeing a quick turnaround at these ports, the Russian authorities had provided no shore facilities for foreign crewmen. None of them was allowed ashore anyway.