“Yes,” she said, “that’s all right, of course. Just establish you. Is that all?”
She sounded disappointed, sensing that the job was a mere token. He reached out and took her hand. He said gravely, “I’ve told you, it’ll be a big help. I mean that.”
The cable from Latymer came while Shaw was changing for dinner. Breaking the departmental cypher, he read:
INFORMED KARSTAD KILLED BY LORRY EAST BERLIN AFTER
CONTACTING DONOVAN STOP REGARD THIS AS POLITICAL
MURDER STOP LUBIN BELIEVED IN AUSTRALIA EXACT
WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN STOP YOU ARE TO FLY SYDNEY
DISEMBARKING PORT SAID
And that, Shaw decided as he burnt the pieces of paper in an ash-tray, must be considered as blowing all his theories about Sigurd Andersson sky-high. He went along and told Gresham and Sir Donald about his new orders, also telling Gresham what Latymer had said about Karstad’s murder. Sir Donald in particular was vastly relieved that his ship appeared to be in the clear.
After the bugle had sounded for second sitting dinner that evening, Shaw, who was in the tavern bar, lingered on over a strong, iced whisky and soda, thinking, trying to puzzle things out and getting nowhere. For one thing, he still wasn’t convinced altogether that he had been wrong about those eyes of Andersson’s. A death report could be phoney — Latymer could check only so far and no farther…
When he went down to dinner he was fifteen minutes late and Judith had nearly finished the fish course. Shaw, nodding distantly at the other people at the table, said: “Good evening, Miss — Dangan. Nice weather we’re having.”
Possibly it was his tone, but she gave a little gulp and choked. Shaw felt her foot touch his under the table, then she said demurely: “Lovely, isn’t it? How do you find the motion, Mr Shaw?”
“Commander,” he corrected her gravely, though he had a job to keep his face straight. “Actually I’m in the Navy, don’t you know. I — er — don’t exactly feel the motion.”
She said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, of course, you did tell me you were a sailor, didn’t you?” Impishly she added, “Do you have a special kind of stomach in the Navy?”
There was a hoot, quickly subdued, from the other end of the table where two Australians, man and wife, were sitting; Shaw guessed that Judith had been feeding them on the line that the man who’d embarked the same day as her at Naples was just another stuffed-shirt naval officer of the sticky, conventional kind, and he decided to play up. The rather frigid silence which he had maintained at meals so far — which came from a genuine shyness and pre-occupation and not from stand-offishness at all — helped him. But he very nearly laughed when he saw the lifted eyebrows, the slight shrug of the shoulders, which the Australian couple exchanged; as plainly as if they’d spoken, that said: Here’s another pommie who wants everyone to know he’s entitled to be called by his rank, but he’ll be taken down a peg when he gets to Australia, so why worry?
This suited Shaw well enough. Still playing up, he disregarded Judith’s inquiry about his stomach as being beneath his notice, put on an irritated face and said officiously and loudly: “Damn slow service — what? Always the same, you know, these merchant ships. Never have an efficient staff. Ought to run ’em Navy fashion!”
He brayed — a difficult task, but he achieved it.
Judith said in a muffled voice, “You mean run them aground, Commander?”
Before Shaw could come back on that the male Australian gave a loud snort. Then he sniffed. He said equably, “Look, bloke. They do their best. If people come down fifteen minutes late, well, then I reckon it’s their own flaming fault. Don’t you?”
Shaw wanted to agree with him. Instead, he ploughed on and managed a kind of painful smirk, said: “Oh — rot! These chaps rather like to be chivvied. They don’t respect you if you’re too pally.”
The Australian inquired, “Commander, you going out to the R.A.N. on exchange, by any chance?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then I wish yer luck, mate.” After that he ignored Shaw, who was left to talk to a highly delighted Judith who kept him well and truly on his toes throughout the meal. Afterwards she waited for him and as they climbed up, intending to go to the veranda lounge for coffee, he whispered in her ear:
“You little devil!”
She laughed. “Pommie yourself!”
He grinned down at her. For some reason he didn’t want to tell her yet that he’d been ordered off the ship at Port Said; he was delighted to see her happy. But he said, “Seriously, don’t overdo it or I shall give the game away. I think you’ve done a lot of good so far — my fame’ll spread like lightning now. Did you notice the Australian couple?”
“Did I?” She was about to suggest they should hurry up and get their coffee before the lounge filled right up, when she saw that he suddenly wasn’t with her any more. Following his glance, she saw a thick, dinner-jacketed back making aft along A deck towards the tavern bar. Cigar smoke wafted back. She asked in a low voice: “Interested in something?”
He said, “Just a thought. Sorry, but maybe I could do with a real drink instead of coffee after all. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. You go ahead.”
He held her shoulder for a moment, then turned away. Slowly he wandered aft along the cabin alleyway, across the A deck square and into the tavern bar. Andersson was just hitching a leg over a high stool at the bar itself. Shaw took another stool and called for a brandy. Andersson glanced round, caught Shaw’s eye. They were almost the only ones in the bar. He asked in a thick voice: “You would care to join me, sir?”
“Well — thanks. That’s very kind of you.”
Andersson nodded briefly, said to the barkeeper: “And I–I shall have a whisky and soda. I pay for both.” Shaw heard him hiccough slightly, noticed that he looked as though he’d had a pretty heavy session before dinner. When the drinks came, Shaw raised his glass.
“Your health.”
“And yours, my dear sir.”
As he drank Shaw studied Andersson over the rim of his glass. In his thick, heavy voice Andersson asked, “You are going all the way, to Australia?”
Shaw nodded, gave the cover-story. As he did so he had a strange feeling that this man knew the truth. It was a disquieting feeling, the more so in view of that cable from Latymer — if Andersson wasn’t Karstad, then who was he? When he’s finished Shaw added: “I’ve never been to Australia before. I don’t know what to expect. Have you been out there?”
“Never.”
There was a short silence; and then Shaw looked Andersson full in the face and said, “It’s funny… I’m probably wrong, but I’m sure I’ve met you before somewhere.”
Andersson gave him a piercing look, then turned away slightly, but there had been time for Shaw to see Karstad again in those eyes and he felt certain he wasn’t wrong. Andersson said, “Then you have the advantage of me, my dear sir. You, I do not recollect.” He leaned towards Shaw; whisky-laden breath wafted across. He looked into the agent’s face, then said with finality: “No, no. I do not know you.”
“Must be my mistake, then,” Shaw murmured. “Only I had an idea we’d met towards the end of the war. Ever been at sea?”
“Never at sea, no. I am a salesman for many, many years. Now I join a firm in Australia, where I intend to remain.” He took a noisy gulp at his whisky. “At the end of the war I was in a German concentration camp, my friend. I doubt if we met there. You do not look to me as though you have been in a German concentration camp.”
“I haven’t, I’m glad to say.” Shaw gave a realistic shudder, slightly exaggerated in his role of plain, lightweight naval officer. “I say, how frightful. You must have had some rotten experiences.”