Judith was tremendously happy and relieved when Sir Donald gave her the news, and when Shaw rejoined the liner she was waiting at the head of the accommodation-ladder as his boat from Steamer Point came alongside. For his part he was vastly relieved to find her safe and sound, and to hear that nothing had happened during his absence. After a word with the girl, he spoke to the senior man of the MAPIACCIND guard who told him all was well with REDCAP.
A few minutes later he was reporting to the Captain.
He told Sir Donald the whole story. He said, “I’m sure Andersson gave those louts the tip — told them to start the fun. I think we ought to have an unofficial copy of any cables he sends or receives from now on, sir. Can that be done?”
Sir Donald nodded. “I’ll see to it if you want me to. But if he’s a wrong ’un they’ll be in some sort of code, of course.”
“Yes, but it might help.” Shaw leaned forward. “Look, sir. You say if he’s a wrong ’un. He’s no more a refrigerator salesman than I am! There can’t be any more doubt about him now.”
The Captain rubbed his chin thoughtfully, sighed. “Possibly, but it doesn’t help much. There’s still nothing conclusive to go on.”
Shaw said savagely, “No, and I’m trying very, very hard to make myself see that we’ll get further in the end by giving him all the rope he wants now. All the same, I’d dearly love to take a swipe at him. And then put him under arrest and land him here in Aden, whatever my chief says. My God, sir — when I think about that filthy tower, and what may be in that man’s mind…
“What about the ship — what about the chances of some sort of explosion aboard, Shaw? Isn’t it time we had a search made, now so much more has happened?”
“No, sir, not in my opinion. Give me a little more time yet. I don’t believe that will happen now — I reckon they’ve got a better use for REDCAP than just blowing it up.” He lit a cigarette. “It won’t happen while Karstad — Andersson’s— aboard anyway. He’s not immortal.”
“Suppose he goes ashore in Colombo? We’ll be in there all day, you know.”
“Well, sir, if he does, we can always think again. Most of the passengers’ll go ashore, I take it, and that’ll make it easier for the crew to search the ship quickly if necessary. If he has planted anything, he’ll have allowed himself plenty of time to get well clear of an atomic blast from your reactor, sir!” Shortly after, the liner left Aden and that night Shaw was having a quiet drink by himself in the tavern when Anders-son approached, immaculate as ever in cream sharkskin, seemingly cool despite the close, crushing heat. Shaw, looking up, met his eye.
Andersson smiled genially. He asked, “Do you mind if I join you, Commander?”
“Do.”
Andersson eased his heavy body into a chair, snapped his fingers at a steward, called for a whisky and soda. Then he asked, “A few little — ah — adventures in Port Said, no doubt?”
Shaw said coolly, “Yes. A few little adventures.”
The man gave a guttural, coarse laugh. He said, “Ah, my friend, I understand! I myself was young once.” His drink came then and he took a gulp, wiped his lips and his forehead with a silk handkerchief. He asked, “And the young lady, Miss… Dangan?”
Shaw’s hand jerked a little as he heard the significant hesitation. He said sharply, “What d’you mean?”
Andersson sniggered, making a lewd, suggestive sound of it. “She did not object?”
“Object?” Shaw’s face hardened. “I don’t understand, I’m afraid. What’s it got to do with you anyway, Mr Andersson?”
Andersson stared out across the lighted decks, into the darkness of the sea swishing faintly past below. He said, “Oh… nothing, nothing. Forgive me.” Then he turned his head, and the penetrating eyes held Shaw’s as he went on in a soft, enfolding tone: “There are things, are there not, which it is better not to pry into. There can be danger in so doing, is that not so?”
“I don’t think I quite follow.”
“No?” Andersson leaned close and Shaw smelt stale cigar smoke. “Then let us make a hypothesis, Commander. Things have happened aboard this ship… poor Gresham’s death, your — ah-little misadventure in Port Said.” He held up his glass, looked quizzically through it to the lights beyond. “I am a man of the world, Commander. And it seems to me that perhaps — some one — is sticking out his neck a little far, and that this is irritating to another party. Now then. Let us suppose further — suppose that the sticker out of necks has a lady friend… let us, for simplicity’s sake, call her Miss Dangan. That name is as good as any other, is it not? Now it could be that the third party, this angry one, while having of course no personal interest in Miss Dangan, might be tempted to bring harm to her unless the first man began to mind his own business. In which case, whatever might happen to the young lady would be the fault of this sticker out of necks. Q.E.D.l” Andersson smiled. “However, enough of such supposings! I wished merely to say how very sorry I was to hear of your troubles in Port Said — and to express the hope that such need not occur again. Also to say that possibly you are fond of the young girl.” Taking up his glass, he finished the whisky and soda and got to his feet. He said, “This hypothetical third party of ours, the angry one. There would be nothing which could be done about him.”
“He could always be arrested, Mr Andersson.”
“No doubt, Commander Shaw. But think how stupid that would be.”
“Why?”
“Work it out for yourself, my dear fellow! And in case you should be tempted to jump to certain conclusions, I had perhaps better tell you that I, Sigurd Andersson, am an unofficial agent of the Swedish Government, for whom I hold a watching brief on… certain matters concerning their interest in MAPIACCIND.”
Shaw stared at the man. Andersson looked into his face and laughed. He said, “When you check that, you will find it is quite genuine, I assure you.” He laughed again and then moved away, leaving Shaw to stare after him with murder in his heart and a claustrophobic feeling of impotence, of acknowledged inability to pull the man in. Of course it would be genuine; Karstad was too experienced at the double agent game, would have taken great pains to give himself unbreakable cover. It would be a tricky business, to interfere with the agent of another Power, however ‘unofficial’ he might be — especially when there was no proof of anything at all. And now it looked as though Andersson might have tumbled to Judith’s real identity.
The liner took her departure from Guardafui, last point of land in Africa, headed out across the Arabian Sea past Socotra for Colombo and Australia. And during the next few days odd and disquieting rumours — and they were still no more than rumours really — trickled into the world’s capitals and appeared in short summaries in the roneo-ed sheets of the liner’s wireless Press News. Shaw read these reports with his early morning tea, saw how they were beginning to confirm what Latymer had told him about the movements of troops in the Far East. His imagination wandered northeast across the seas to the unknown lands, recalled the almost astronomical numbers of the armies which could now be mobilizing, visualized the paddy-fields and the shops and the modem factories emptying day by day as men were called up for service and concentrated in the assembly areas, saw in his imagination the movements along the rutted, terrible tracks, men and pack-mules force-marching, the mechanized and armoured divisions moving faster and more easily for the ports and the airfields, the technical units converging on the areas where the nuclear stockpiles lay. Maybe he was exaggerating, giving his imagination too much play, but what he saw in his mind as he read those sketchy reports was a mixture of Gresham and Latymer and himself, and it worried him. When news grew scarcer the reports indicated, as unconfirmed rumours, that some foreign newspaper correspondents had been arrested, cut off from their news outlets except for the transmission of presumably prepared bulletins approved by the Central Government.