‘A very impressive ship,’ Nancy murmured as she stared down at the dummy.
‘There isn’t another in the world like her,’ Richards said. ‘I’m afraid I’m not allowed to discuss her dimensions, speed or the size of her crew. The US Navy is very sensitive about such statistics. But when she goes to sea you can tell all your friends you saw her on the ways here.’ He played the part of the proud shipbuilder to perfection.
‘Will she be used as a transport for passengers? She’s so large.’ Nancy’s ingenuousness was equally clever.
‘The Navy will do what it pleases, but she’s the first multipurpose submarine ever made,’ he replied. ‘A launching platform for atomic projectiles. A transport for Marines. Or,’ he added, pausing for an instant, ‘she’ll also be capable of performing certain underwater research functions.’
He plunged a hand into a jacket pocket, which was a signal to a Corporation agent below.
The man promptly hailed him, shouting that he had to see him on a matter of the utmost importance.
Richards excused himself. ‘Come below with me if you’re uncomfortable up here,’ he said. ‘If not, I’ll be right back.’
‘I’d love to stay a bit longer,’ she said.
‘Of course.’ He disappeared down the stairs.
The opportunity, Nancy told herself, was an agent’s dream come true. The workmen were ignoring her, Richards went to a corner of the lot to talk to the man who had summoned him, and no one within sight seemed aware of her existence.
The thought occurred to her that the Americans had made it astonishingly easy for her to see this extraordinary submarine. Porter knew of her foreign involvements, and certainly he wasn’t so infatuated with her that he would deliberately neglect his duty.
On the other hand, perhaps she should count her blessings and not decry her good fortune. Every KGB agent was told, in one of the early indoctrination lectures, how an operative had stumbled on to major clues that had simplified the task that had confronted Soviet scientists when they had made their first atomic bomb.
‘When your luck is bad,’ Comrade Andropov had told her class in a graduation address, ‘float on the waves. Tread water. When your luck is good, don’t question it. Swim with the tide!’
Nancy was enjoying a marvellous stroke of luck, there was no doubt of that much. Swim with it, she told herself. Stop debating when it will do you no good.
Get busy! Do something! Now!
She took a ballpoint pen from her shoulderbag, steadied it against the rough wooden rail and clicked it repeatedly. Then, after dropping it into her bag, she removed an ordinary-looking lipstick and repeated the process.
When Franklin Richards returned to the platform she was applying a coating of lipstick to her mouth. ‘This has been a thrilling experience,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how I can ever thank you for it.’
‘Your pleasure,’ he said, ‘has already repaid me.’
They returned to his office, where she accepted a cup of tea, but she stayed for no more than a quarter of an hour, saying she was already late for an appointment.
Richards made a brief telephone call when she left.
A Corporation employee followed her out of the parking lot, and another picked her up at the gate. Blackman had established a network that operated smoothly, and every few miles, as Nancy headed up the shore road in the direction of the rented house she shared with Porter, another car took over.
The surveillance was routine, but finally the man covering her at that moment broke radio silence. ‘She’s just turned on to Spruce Lane,’ he said. ‘Take over at the other end.’
A one-storey wooden building, badly in need of paint, stood at the end of the lane, and over the door was a weatherbeaten sign:
When Nancy entered a man with curly hair and a handlebar moustache lounged behind the counter, smoking a cigar and listening to a baseball game on a transistor radio.
There was one other customer in the place, a burly man in a flannel shirt and nondescript trousers, who was selecting soups
and baked beans from a sparsely stocked shelf. He was intent on his labours, and ignored the girl.
‘I have a little problem,’ Nancy said, ‘and I hope you can help me. Do you carry cartridges for ballpoint pens?’
‘That depends on the make,’ the man behind the counter said, speaking with a heavy Greek accent.
‘I’m not sure. Let me show you.’ She fished in her shoulder-bag, and finally produced her pen.
The proprietor turned it over in his hand. ‘I’m not sure, lady,’ he said. ‘I look in the back.’ He disappeared into an inner room, taking the pen with him.
The male customer moved from the grocery shelf to another, where he studied a row of pipe tobacco tins.
The proprietor reappeared. ‘Sorry, lady,’ he said. ‘I got none that will fit this pen.’
Nancy took the pen from him. ‘Oh, dear. I don’t suppose you have cosmetics here?’
‘A few things. What you want?’
‘I need a new lipstick of this shade.’ She handed him the lipstick she had used to good effect at the shipyard.
He removed the top and stared at the contents. ‘Maybe I got it, maybe I don’t,’ he said, and vanished again.
Nancy lighted a cigarette while she waited.
The other customer took a tin of tobacco and went to a refrigerator with a glass door, where he peered at six-packs of beer.
Again the proprietor returned. ‘This is the closest I got,’ he said, handing her the old lipstick and another with a dust-covered case.
Nancy dropped her lipstick into her bag, opened the new one and placed a tiny smear on the back of her hand. ‘This isn’t exactly what I want, but it will do. How much do I owe you?’
‘Two dollar anna quarter, lady.’
While she was producing the right amount, the other customer moved to the counter with his purchases. ‘Gonna rain tonight, Chris?’
‘Sure. All the time we get rain.’
Nancy thanked the proprietor and departed.
A few moments later the other customer left, too, climbed into his dilapidated pickup truck and snapped on his shortwave radio.
Porter manned the telephone line in the command post himself, speaking to Corporation headquarters, while Blackman paced the length of the room. ‘This is a red flag, urgent. Give me a rundown on Chris Agropolis. Runs a country store on Spruce Lane, about twelve miles east of Port Angeles. IJell no, you will not call me back. I’ll hold the line, and if you don’t get back to me in no more than five minutes, you’ll explain the delay to the Director. In writing.’ He sat back in his chair and rolled a cigarette with his free hand.
Blackman stopped pacing. ‘We know there’s a camera in that ballpoint pen. Mrs Stevens will check as soon as she has the chance after the girl gets back to the house, but it’s safe to assume there’s a camera in the lipstick, too.’
‘Seems that way,’ Porter said. ‘Mac’s report sounds like a classic letter-drop.’
‘Franklin Richards doesn’t know if she took any pictures of the decoy submarine?’
‘He couldn’t tell, and neither could Vic, who was watching her through binoculars. She fiddled around with her shoulderbag, and all he saw for certain was that she used a lipstick just before Richards returned to the scaffolding. So the whole thing fits.’
Blackman smiled, but remained tense.
‘You’re sure you have enough people covering this Agropolis?’
‘A small army.’