Книга - Night of Error

Night of Error
Desmond Bagley


Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in the Pacific.When Mark Trevelyan dies on a journey to a remote Pacific atoll, the verdict that it was natural causes doesn’t convince his brother, Mike. The series of violent attacks that follows only adds to his suspicions. Just two clues – a notebook in code and a lump of rock – are enough to trigger off a hazardous expedition, and a violent confrontation far from civilization…









DESMOND BAGLEY


Night of Error









COPYRIGHT (#ulink_398c8656-b6f1-5ff3-88f9-d368a9211053)


HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1984



Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1984



Cover layout design Richard Augustus © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.



A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.



This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.



All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.



Source ISBN: 9780008211370

Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN 9780008211387

Version:2017-07-05




CONTENTS


Cover (#u167073bc-1594-5381-a3d2-c662a11f74c3)

Title Page (#u2cd71a9d-325c-5db6-a533-56125e28de30)

Copyright (#u65ba5d56-a0bb-5558-8db1-fc959ad7e135)

Night of Error (#u3248dd46-2845-586b-953e-629d00f6240b)

Dedication (#ue5da7d77-0d37-5c39-8179-c5e8480bbd02)

Preface (#u1a7d76d2-bfb7-5274-8be6-e9dab92dba4b)

Map (#u65217547-0811-540d-a083-92e0da207e00)

Epigraph (#u043599d8-03fc-5761-b85a-195972a154f3)

One (#u8409b47f-ed56-54f2-b56e-cbd8c553ebaa)

Two (#ue1fa37e6-7110-51a1-be1e-d7b97e0571da)

Three (#u59e6eba9-6188-55d3-b1b2-301f8943dd1a)

Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)



NIGHT OF ERROR (#u4ee9f57f-6fbc-520b-be5c-5fa9a7ccc9dd)




DEDICATION (#u4ee9f57f-6fbc-520b-be5c-5fa9a7ccc9dd)


For STAN HURST, at last, with affection




PREFACE (#ulink_515b2f8a-49b7-5750-ad5f-7f359125a330)


The Pacific Islands Pilot, Vol. II, published by the Hydrographer of the Navy, has this to say about the island of Fonua Fo’ou, almost at the end of a long and detailed history:

In 1963, HMNZFA Tui reported a hard grey rock, with a depth of 6 feet over it, on which the sea breaks, and general depths of 36 feet extending for 2 miles northwards and 1 1/2 miles westward of the rock, in the position of the bank. The eastern side is steep-to. In the vicinity of the rock, there was much discoloured water caused by sulphurous gas bubbles rising to the surface. On the bank, the bottom was clearly visible, and consisted of fine black cellar lava, like volcanic cinder, with patches of white sand and rock. Numerous sperm whales were seen in the vicinity.

But that edition was not published until 1969.

This story began in 1962.




MAP (#ulink_e2eb47b2-b928-5c50-938c-1edd622def0a)










EPIGRAPH (#u4ee9f57f-6fbc-520b-be5c-5fa9a7ccc9dd)


And when with grief you see your brother stray, Or in a night of error lose his way, Direct his wandering and restore the day. To guide his steps afford your kindest aid, And gently pity whom you can’t persuade: Leave to avenging Heaven his stubborn will, For, O, remember, he’s your brother still.

JONATHAN SWIFT





ONE (#ulink_6b3342f6-2f6c-5bbb-b9bf-2746e6423ab2)


I heard of the way my brother died on a wet and gloomy afternoon in London. The sky was overcast and weeping and it became dark early that day, much earlier than usual. I couldn’t see the figures I was checking, so I turned on the desk light and got up to close the curtains.

I stood for a moment watching the rain leak from the plane trees on the Embankment, then looked over the mistshrouded Thames. I shivered slightly, wishing I could get out of this grey city and back to sea under tropic skies. I drew the curtain decisively, closing out the gloom.

The telephone rang.

It was Helen, my brother’s widow, and she sounded hysterical. ‘Mike, there’s a man here – Mr Kane – who was with Mark when he died. I think you’d better see him.’ Her voice broke. ‘I can’t take it, Mike.’

‘All right, Helen; shoot him over. I’ll be here until five-thirty – can he make it before then?’

There was a pause and an indistinct murmur, then Helen said, ‘Yes, he’ll be at the Institute before then. Thanks, Mike. Oh, and there’s a slip from British Airways – something has come from Tahiti; I think it must be Mark’s things. I posted it to you this morning – will you look after it for me? I don’t think I could bear to.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after everything.’

She rang off and I put down the receiver slowly and leaned back in my chair. Helen seemed distraught about Mark and I wondered what this man Kane had told her. All I knew was that Mark had died somewhere in the Islands near Tahiti; the British Consul there had wrapped it all up and the Foreign Office had got in touch with Helen as next of kin. She never said so but it must have been a relief – her marriage had caused her nothing but misery.

She should never have married him in the first place. I had tried to warn her, but it’s a bit difficult telling one’s prospective sister-in-law about the iniquities of one’s own brother, and I’d never got it across. Still, she must have loved him despite everything, judging by the way she was behaving; but then, Mark had a way with his women.

One thing was certain – Mark’s death wouldn’t affect me a scrap. I had long ago taken his measure and had steered clear of him and all his doings, all the devious and calculating cold-blooded plans which had only one end in view – the glorification of Mark Trevelyan.

I put him out of my mind, adjusted the desk lamp and got down to my figures again. People think of scientists – especially oceanographers – as being constantly in the field making esoteric discoveries. They never think of the office work entailed – and if I didn’t get clear of this routine work I’d never get back to sea. I thought that if I really buckled down to it another day would see it through, and then I would have a month’s leave, if I could consider writing a paper for the journals as constituting leave. But even that would not take up the whole month.

At a quarter to six I packed it in for the day and Kane had still not shown up. I was just putting on my overcoat when there was a knock on the door and when I opened it a man said, ‘Mr Trevelyan?’

Kane was a tall, haggard man of about forty, dressed in rough seaman’s clothing and wearing a battered peaked cap. He seemed subdued and a little in awe of his surroundings. As we shook hands I could feel the callouses and thought that perhaps he was a sailing man – steam seamen don’t have much occasion to do that kind of hand work.

I said, ‘I’m sorry to have dragged you across London on a day like this, Mr Kane.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said in a raw Australian accent. ‘I was coming up this way.’

I sized him up. ‘I was just going out. What about a drink?’

He smiled. ‘That ‘ud be fine. I like your English beer.’

We went to a nearby pub and I took him into the public bar and ordered a couple of beers. He sank half a pint and gasped luxuriously. ‘This is good beer,’ he said. ‘Not as good as Swan, but good all the same. You know Swan beer?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘I’ve never had any. Australian, isn’t it?’

‘Yair; the best beer in the world.’

To an Australian all things Australian are the best. ‘Would I be correct if I said you’d done your time in sail?’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Too right you would. How do you know?’

‘I’ve sailed myself; I suppose it shows somehow.’

‘Then I won’t have to explain too much detail when I tell you about your brother. I suppose you want to know the whole story? I didn’t tell Mrs Trevelyan all of it, you know – some of it’s pretty grim.’

‘I’d better know everything.’

Kane finished his beer and cocked an eye at me. ‘Another?’

‘Not for me just yet. You go ahead.’

He ordered another beer and said, ‘Well, we were sailing in the Society Islands – my partner and me – we’ve got a schooner and we do a bit of trading and pick up copra and maybe a few pearls. We were in the Tuamotus – the locals call them the Paumotus, but they’re the Tuamotus on the charts. They’re east of …’

‘I know where they are,’ I interrupted.

‘Okay. Well, we thought there was a chance of picking up a few pearls so we were just cruising round calling on the inhabited islands. Most of ’em aren’t and most of ‘em don’t have names – not names that we can pronounce. Anyway we were passing this one when a canoe came out and hailed us. There was a boy in this canoe – a Polynesian, you know – and Jim talked to him. Jim Hadley’s my partner; he speaks the lingo – I don’t savvy it too good myself.

‘What he said was that there was a white man on the island who was very sick, and so we went ashore to have a look at him.’

‘That was my brother?’

‘Too right, and he was sick; my word yes.’

‘What was wrong with him?’

Kane shrugged. ‘We didn’t know at first but it turned out to be appendicitis. That’s what we found out after we got a doctor to him.’

‘Then there was a doctor?’

‘If you could call him a doctor. He was a drunken old no-hoper who’d been living in the Islands for years. But he said he was a doctor. He wasn’t there though; Jim had to go fifty miles to get him while I stayed with your brother.’

Kane took another pull at his beer. ‘Your brother was alone on this island except for the black boy. There wasn’t no boat, either. He said he was some sort of scientist – something to do with the sea.’

‘An oceanographer.’ Yes, like me an oceanographer. Mark had always felt compelled, driven, to try and beat me whatever the game. And his rules were always his own.

‘Too right. He said he’d been dropped there to do some research and he was due to be picked up any time.’

‘Why didn’t you take him to the doctor instead of bringing the doctor to him?’ I asked.

‘We didn’t think he’d make it,’ said Kane simply. ‘A little ship like ours bounces about a lot, and he was pretty sick.’

‘I see,’ I said. He was painting a rough picture.

‘I did what I could for him,’ said Kane. ‘There wasn’t much I could do though, beyond cleaning him up. We talked a lot about this and that – that was when he asked me to tell his wife.’

‘Surely he didn’t expect you to make a special trip to England?’ I demanded, thinking that even in death it sounded like Mark’s touch.

‘Oh, it was nothing like that,’ said Kane. ‘You see, I was coming to England anyway. I won a bit of money in a sweep and I always wanted to see the old country. Jim, my cobber, said he could carry on alone for a bit, and he dropped me at Panama. I bummed a job on a ship coming to England.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘I won’t be staying here as long as I thought – I dropped a packet in a poker game coming across. I’ll stay until my cash runs out and then I’ll go back to Jim and the schooner.’

I said, ‘What happened when the doctor came?’

‘Oh sure, you want to know about your brother; sorry if I got off track. Well, Jim brought this old no-good back and he operated. He said he had to, it was your brother’s only chance. Pretty rough it was too; the doc’s instruments weren’t any too good. I helped him – Jim hadn’t the stomach for it.’ He fell silent, looking back into the past.

I ordered another couple of beers, but Kane said, ‘I’d like something stronger, if you don’t mind,’ so I changed the order to whisky.

I thought of some drunken oaf of a doctor cutting my brother open with blunt knives on a benighted tropical island. It wasn’t a pretty thought and I think Kane saw the horror of it too, the way he gulped his whisky. It was worse for him – he had been there.

‘So he died,’ I said.

‘Not right away. He seemed okay after the operation, then he got worse. The doc said it was per … peri …’

‘Peritonitis?’

‘That’s it. I remember it sounded like peri-peri sauce – like having something hot in your guts. He got a fever and went delirious; then he went unconscious and died two days after the operation.’

He looked into his glass. ‘We buried him at sea. It was stinking hot and we couldn’t carry the body anywhere – we hadn’t any ice. We sewed him up in canvas and put him over the side. The doctor said he’d see to all the details – I mean, it wasn’t any use for Jim and me to go all the way to Papeete – the doc knew all we knew.’

‘You told the doctor about Mark’s wife – her address and so on?’

Kane nodded. ‘Mrs Trevelyan said she’d only just heard about it – that’s the Islands postal service for you. You know, he never gave us nothing for her, no personal stuff I mean. We wondered about that. But she said some gear of his is on the way – that right?’

‘It might be that,’ I said. ‘There’s something at Heathrow now. I’ll probably pick it up tomorrow. When did Mark die, by the way?’

He reflected. ‘Must have been about four months ago. You don’t go much for dates and calendars when you’re cruising the Islands, not unless you’re navigating and looking up the almanack all the time, and Jim’s the expert on that. I reckon it was about the beginning of May. Jim dropped me at Panama in July and I had to wait a bit to get a ship across here.’

‘Do you remember the doctor’s name? Or where he came from?’

Kane frowned. ‘I know he was a Dutchman; his name was Scoot-something. As near as I can remember it might have been Scooter. He runs a hospital on one of the Islands – my word, I can’t remember that either.’

‘It’s of no consequence; if it becomes important I can get it from the death certificate.’ I finished my whisky. ‘The last I heard of Mark he was working with a Swede called Norgaard. You didn’t come across him?’

Kane shook his head. ‘There was only your brother. We didn’t stay around, you know. Not when old Scooter said he’d take care of everything. You think this Norgaard was supposed to pick your brother up when he’d finished his job?’

‘Something like that,’ I said. ‘It’s been very good of you to take the trouble to tell us about Mark’s death.’

He waved my thanks aside. ‘No trouble at all; anyone would have done the same. I didn’t tell Mrs Trevelyan too much, you understand.’

‘I’ll edit it when I tell her,’ I said. ‘Anyway, thanks for looking after him. I wouldn’t like to think he died alone.’

‘Aw, look,’ said Kane, embarrassed. ‘We couldn’t do anything else now, could we?’

I gave him my card. ‘I’d like you to keep in touch,’ I said. ‘Perhaps when you’re ready to go back I can help you with a passage. I have plenty of contacts with the shipping people.’

‘Too right,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep in touch, Mr Trevelyan.’

I said goodbye and left the bar, ducking into the private bar in the same pub. I didn’t think Kane would go in there and I wanted a few quiet thoughts over another drink.

I thought of Mark dying a rather gruesome death on that lonely Pacific atoll. God knows that Mark and I didn’t see eye to eye but I wouldn’t have wished that fate on my worst enemy. And yet there was something odd about the whole story; I wasn’t surprised at him being in the Tuamotus – it was his job to go poking about odd corners of the seven seas as it was mine – but something struck a sour note.

For instance, what had happened to Norgaard? It certainly wasn’t standard operating procedure for a man to be left entirely alone on a job. I wondered what Mark and Norgaard had been doing in the Tuamotus; they had published no papers so perhaps their investigation hadn’t been completed. I made a mental note to ask old Jarvis about it; my boss kept his ear close to the grapevine and knew everything that went on in the profession.

But it wasn’t that which worried me; it was something else, something niggling at the back of my mind that I couldn’t resolve. I chased it around for a bit but nothing happened, so I finished my drink and went home to my flat for a late night session with some figures.




II


The next day I was at the office bright and early and managed to get my work finished just before lunch. I was attacking my neglected correspondence when one of the girls brought in a visitor, and a most welcome one. Geordie Wilkins had been my father’s sergeant in the Commandos during the war and after my father had been killed he took an interest in the sons of the man he had so greatly respected. Mark, typically, had been a little contemptuous of him but I liked Geordie and we got on well together.

He had done well for himself after the war. He foresaw the yachting boom and bought himself a 25-ton cutter which he chartered and in which he gave sailing lessons. Later he gave up tuition and had worked up to a 200-ton brigantine which he chartered to rich Americans mostly, taking them anywhere they wanted to go at an exorbitant price. Whenever he put into England he looked me up, but it had been a while since last I’d seen him.

He came into the office bringing with him a breath of sea air. ‘My God, Mike, but you’re pallid,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to take you back to sea.’

‘Geordie! Where have you sprung from this time?’

‘The Caribbean,’ he said. ‘I brought the old girl over for a refit. I’m in between charters, thank God.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘With you – if you’ll have me. Esmerelda’s here.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I said happily. ‘You know you’re welcome. We seem to have struck it lucky this time; I have to do a bit of writing which will take a week, and then I’ve got three weeks spare.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘I’m tied up for a week too, but I’m free after that. We’ll push off somewhere.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘I’ve been dying to get away. Wait while I check this post, would you?’

The letter I had just opened was from Helen; it contained a brief letter and the advisory note from British Airways. There was something to be collected from Heathrow which had to clear customs. I looked up at Geordie. ‘Did you know that Mark is dead?’

He looked startled. ‘Dead! When did that happen?’

I told him all about it and he said, ‘A damned sticky end – even for Mark.’ Then he immediately apologized. ‘Sorry – I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Quit it, Geordie,’ I said irritably. ‘You know how I felt about Mark; there’s no need to be mealy-mouthed with me.’

‘Aye. He was a bit of a bastard, wasn’t he? How’s that wife of his taking it?’

‘About average under the circumstances. She was pretty broken up but I seem to detect an underlying note of relief.’

‘She’s best to remarry and forget him,’ said Geordie bluntly. He shook his head slowly. ‘It beats me what the women saw in Mark. He treated ‘em like dirt and they sat up and begged for more.’

‘Some people have it, some don’t,’ I said.

‘If it means being like Mark I’d rather not have it. Sad to think one can’t find a good word to say for the man.’ He took the paper out of my hand. ‘Got a car I can use? I haven’t been in one for months and I’d like the drive. I’ll get my gear from Esmerelda and go out and pick this stuff up for you.’

I tossed him my car keys. ‘Thanks. It’s the same old wreck – you’ll find it in the car park.’

When he had gone I finished up my paperwork and then went to see the Prof. to pay my respects. Old Jarvis was quite cordial. ‘You’ve done a good job, Mike,’ he said. ‘I’ve looked at your stuff briefly and if your correlations are correct I think we’re on to something.’

‘Thank you.’

He leaned back in his chair and started to fill his pipe. ‘You’ll be writing a paper, of course.’

‘I’ll do that while I’m on leave,’ I said. ‘It won’t be a long one; just a preliminary. There’s still a lot of sea time to put in.’

‘Looking forward to getting back to it, are you?’

‘I’ll be glad to get away.’

He grunted suddenly. ‘For every day you spend at sea you’ll have three in the office digesting the data. And don’t get into a job like mine; it’s all office-work. Steer clear of administration, my boy; don’t get chair-bound.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised and then changed tack. ‘Can you tell me anything about a fellow called Norgaard? I think he’s a Swede working on ocean currents.’

Jarvis looked at me from under bushy eyebrows. ‘Wasn’t he the chap working with your brother when he died?’

‘That’s the man.’

He pondered, then shook his head. ‘I haven’t heard anything of him lately; he certainly hasn’t published. But I’ll make a few enquiries and put you in touch.’

And that was that. I didn’t know why I had taken the trouble to ask the Prof. about Norgaard unless it was still that uneasy itch at the back of my skull, the feeling that something was wrong somewhere. It probably didn’t mean anything anyway, and I put it out of my mind as I walked back to my office.

It was getting late and I was about ready to leave when Geordie returned and heaved a battered, ancient suitcase onto my desk. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘They made me open it – it was a wee bit difficult without a key, though.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Busted the lock,’ he said cheerfully.

I looked at the case warily. ‘What’s in it?’

‘Not much. Some clothes, a few books and a lot of pebbles. And there’s a letter addressed to Mark’s wife.’ He untied the string holding the case together, skimmed the letter across the desk, and started to haul out the contents – a couple of tropical suits, not very clean; two shirts; three pairs of socks; three textbooks on oceanography – very up-to-date; a couple of notebooks in Mark’s handwriting, and a miscellany of pens, toiletries and small odds and ends.

I looked at the letter, addressed to Helen in a neat cursive hand. ‘I’d better open this,’ I said. ‘We don’t know what’s in it and I don’t want Helen to get too much of a shock.’

Geordie nodded and I slit the envelope. The letter was short and rather abrupt:

Dear Mrs Trevelyan,

I am sorry to tell you that your husband, Mark, is dead, although you may know this already by the time you get this. Mark was a good friend to me and left some of his things in my care. I am sending them all to you as I know you would like to have them.

Sincerely,

P. Nelson

I said, ‘I thought this would be official but it’s not.’

Geordie scanned the short note. ‘Do you know this chap, Nelson?’

‘Never heard of him.’

Geordie put the letter on the desk and tipped up the suitcase. ‘Then there are these.’ A dozen or so potato-like objects rolled onto the desk. Some of them rolled further and thumped onto the carpet, and Geordie stooped and picked them up. ‘You’ll probably make more sense of these than I can.’

I turned one in my fingers. ‘Manganese nodules,’ I said. ‘Very common in the Pacific.’

‘Are they valuable?’

I laughed. ‘If you could get at them easily they might be – but you can’t, so they aren’t. They lie on the seabed at an average depth of about fourteen thousand feet.’

He looked closely at one of the nodules. ‘I wonder where he got these, then? It’s a bit deep for skin-diving.’

‘They’re probably souvenirs of the IGY – the International Geophysical Year. Mark was a physical chemist on one of the ships in the Pacific.’ I took one of the notebooks and flipped the pages at random. Most of it seemed to be mathematical, the equations close-packed in Mark’s finicky hand.

I tossed it into the open suitcase. ‘Let’s get this stuff packed away, then we’ll go home.’

So we put everything back, higgledy-piggledy, and carted the case down to the car. On the way home Geordie said, ‘What about a show tonight?’ On his rare visits to a city he had a soft spot for big gaudy musicals.

‘If you can get tickets,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like queueing.’

‘I’ll get them,’ he said confidently. ‘I know someone who owes me a few favours. Look, drop me right here and I’ll see you at the flat in half an hour, or maybe a bit longer.’

I dropped him and when I got to where I lived I took Mark’s suitcase first because it came handiest, then I went back to the car for Geordie’s gear. For some time I pottered about estimating what I’d need for a trip away with him, but I had most of what I needed and the list of things I had to get was very short and didn’t take long to figure out.

After a while I found myself looking at the suitcase. I picked it up, put it on the bed and opened it and looked at the few remnants of Mark’s life. I hoped that when I went I’d leave more than a few books, a few clothes and a doubtful reputation. The clothing was of no particular interest but, as I lifted up a jacket, a small leather-bound notebook fell out of the breast pocket.

I picked it up and examined it. It had obviously been used as a diary but most of the entries were in shorthand, once Pitman’s, but adapted in an idiosyncratic way so that they were incomprehensible to anyone but the writer – Mark.

Occasionally there were lines of chemical and mathematical notation and every now and then there was a doodled drawing. I remembered that Mark had been a doodler even at school and had been ticked off often because of the state of his exercise books. There wasn’t much sense to be made of any of it.

I put the diary on my dressing table and turned to the larger notebooks. They were much more interesting although scarcely more comprehensible. Apparently, Mark was working on a theory of nodule formation that, to say the least of it, was hare-brained – certainly from the point of view of orthodox physical chemistry. The time scale he was using was fantastic, and even at a casual glance his qualitative analysis seemed out of line.

Presently I heard Geordie come in. He popped his head round the door of the bedroom and said triumphantly, ‘I’ve got the tickets. Let’s have a slap-up dinner first and then go on to the theatre.’

‘That’s a damned good idea,’ I said. I threw the notebooks and the clothing back into the case and retied the lid down.

Geordie nodded at it. ‘Find anything interesting?’

I grinned. ‘Nothing, except that Mark was going round the bend. He’d got hold of some damn fool idea about nodules and was going overboard about it.’

I shoved the case under the bed and began to get dressed for dinner.




III


It was a good dinner and a better show and we drove home replete with fine food and excellent entertainment. Geordie was in high spirits and sang in a cracked and tuneless voice one of the numbers from the show. We were both in a cheerful mood.

I parked the car outside the block of flats and got out. There was still a thin drizzle of rain but I thought that by morning it would have cleared. That was good; I wanted fine weather for my leave. As I looked up at the sky I stiffened.

‘Geordie, there’s someone in my flat.’

He looked up at the third floor and saw what I had seen – a furtive, hunting light moving at one of the windows.

‘That’s a torch.’ His teeth flashed as he grinned in the darkness. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve had a proper scrap.’

I said, ‘Come on,’ and ran up into the foyer.

Geordie caught my arm as I pressed for the lift. ‘Hold on, let’s do this properly,’ he said. ‘Wait one minute and then go up in the lift. I’ll take the stairs – we should arrive on your floor at the same time. Covers both exits.’

I grinned and saluted. ‘Yes, sergeant.’ You can’t keep an old soldier down; Geordie was making a military operation out of catching a sneak thief – but I followed orders.

I went up in the lift and stepped out into the lighted corridor. Geordie had made good time up the stairs and was breathing as easily as though he’d been strolling on the level. He motioned me to keep the lift door open and reached inside to press the button for the top floor. I closed the door and the lift went up.

He grinned in his turn. ‘Anyone leaving in a hurry must use the stairs now. Got your key?’

I passed it to him and we walked to the door of my flat, treading softly. Through the uncurtained kitchen window I could see the flash of a torch. Geordie cautiously inserted the key into the lock. ‘We’ll go in sharpish,’ he whispered, gave the key a twist, threw open the door and plunged into the flat like an angry bull.

As I followed on his heel I heard a shout – ’Ojo!’ - and the next thing I knew was a blinding flash in my eyes and I was grappling with someone at the kitchen door. Whoever it was hit me on the side of the head, it must have been with the torch because the light went out. I felt dizzy for a moment but held on, thrusting forward and bringing my knee up sharply.

I heard a gasp of pain and above it the roar of Geordie’s voice from further in the flat – possibly the bedroom.

I let go my grip and struck out with my fist, and yelled in pain as my knuckles hit the kitchen door. My opponent squirmed out from where I had him pinned and was gone through the open door of the flat. Things were happening too fast for me. I could hear Geordie swearing at the top of his voice and the crash of furniture. A light tenor voice called, ‘Huid! Huid! No disparéis! Emplead cuchillos!’ Then suddenly someone else banged into me in the darkness and I struck out again.

I knew now that this assailant would certainly have a knife and possibly a gun and I think I went berserk – it’s wonderful what the adrenal glands will do for a man in an emergency. In the light from the corridor I caught a glimpse of an upraised knife and I chopped viciously at the wrist. There was a howl of pain and the knife clattered to the floor. I aimed a punch at where I thought a stomach was – and missed.

Something was swung at the side of my head again and I went down as a black figure jumped over me. If he hadn’t stopped to kick at my head he would have got clean away, but I squirmed to avoid his boot and caught his leg, and he went sprawling into the corridor.

I dived after him and got between him and the stairs, and he stood in a crouch looking at me, his eyes darting about, looking for escape. Then I saw what he must have swung at my head in the flat – it was Mark’s suitcase.

Suddenly he turned and ran, towards the blank end of the corridor. ‘I’ve got him now,’ I thought exultantly, and went after him at a dead run. But he had remembered what I’d forgotten – the fire escape.

He might have got away then but once again I tackled him rugby-fashion so that I floored him just short of the fire escape. The fall knocked the breath out of me and he improved the shining hour by kicking me in the face. Then, as I was shaking my head in dizziness, he tossed Mark’s case into the darkness.

By the time I regained my feet I was between him and the metal staircase and he was facing me with his right hand, now unencumbered, darting to his pocket. I saw the gun as he drew it and knew the meaning of real fear. I jumped for him and he side-stepped frantically trying to clear the gun from his pocket – but the foresight must have caught on the lining.

Then I hit him hard on the jaw and he teetered on the top step of the fire escape. I hit him again and slammed him against the railing and, to my horror, he jackknifed over. He didn’t make a sound as he fell the three floors into the alley and it seemed a long time before I heard the dull thump as he hit the ground.

I looked down into the darkness and saw nothing. I was conscious of the trembling of my hands as they gripped the steel rail. There was a scurry of footsteps and I turned to see Geordie darting down the stairs. ‘Leave them,’ I shouted. ‘They’re armed!’

But he didn’t stop and all I heard was the thud of his feet as he raced down the staircase.

The tall thin man who lived in the next flat came out in a dressing gown. ‘Now, what’s all this?’ he asked querulously. ‘A chap can’t listen to the radio with all this racket going on.’

I said, ‘Phone the police. There’s been an attempted murder.’

His face went white and he looked at my arm. I looked down and saw blood staining the edges of a slit in the sleeve of my jacket. I couldn’t remember being knifed and I felt nothing.

I looked back up at him. ‘Well, hurry,’ I yelled at him.

A gunshot echoed up the stairwell and we both started.

‘Christ!’

I clattered down the stairs at top speed, all three flights, and came across Geordie in the foyer. He was sitting on the floor staring at his fingers in amazement – they were red with welling blood.

‘The bastard shot me!’ he said incredulously.

‘Where are you hit, for God’s sake?’

‘In the hand, I think. I don’t feel anything anywhere else, and he only fired one shot.’

I looked at his hand. Blood was spurting from the end of his little finger. I began to laugh, an hysterical sound not far from crying, and went on until Geordie slapped my face with his unwounded hand. ‘Pull yourself together, Mike,’ he said firmly. I became aware of doors slamming and voices upstairs but as yet nobody had ventured down into the foyer itself, and I sobered suddenly.

‘I think I killed one of them,’ I said emptily.

‘Don’t be daft. How could you kill a man with your fist?’

‘I knocked him off the fire escape. He fell from the third floor.’

Geordie looked at me closely. ‘We’d better go and have a look at that.’

‘Are you all right?’ We were both bleeding freely now.

He was wrapping his finger in a handkerchief which promptly turned bright red. ‘I’m okay. You can’t call this a mortal wound,’ he said dryly. We went out into the street and walked quickly round to the alley into which the fire escape led. As we turned the corner there was a sudden glare of light and the roar of an engine, together with the slamming of a car door.

‘Look out!’ yelled Geordie and flung himself sideways.

I saw the two great eyes of headlamps rushing at me from the darkness of the alley and I frantically flattened myself against the wall. The car roared past and I felt the wind of it brush my trousers, and then with a squeal of hard-used tyres it turned the corner and was gone.

I listened to the noise of the engine die away and eased myself from the wall, taking a deep shaky breath. In the light of the street lamp on the corner I saw Geordie pick himself up. ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen next.’

‘This lot aren’t ordinary burglars,’ said Geordie, brushing himself down. ‘They’re too bloody persistent. Where’s this fire escape?’

‘A bit further along,’ I said.

We walked slowly up the alley and Geordie fell over the man I had knocked over the edge. We bent down to examine him and, in the faint light, we could see his head. It was twisted at an impossible angle and there was a deep bloody depression in the skull.

Geordie said, ‘No need to look any further. He’s dead.’




IV


‘And you say they were speaking Spanish,’ said the Inspector.

I nodded wearily. ‘As soon as we went into the flat someone shouted, “Look out!” and then I was in the middle of a fight. A bit later on another man shouted, “Get out of here; don’t shoot – use your knives.” I think it was the man I knocked off the fire escape.’

The Inspector looked at me thoughtfully. ‘But you say he was going to shoot you.’

‘He’d lost his knife by then, and I was going for him.’

‘How good is your Spanish, Mr Trevelyan?’

‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘I did a lot of work off south-west Europe about four years ago and I was based in Spain. I took the trouble to learn the language – I have a flair for them.’

The doctor tied a neat knot in the bandage round my arm and said, ‘That’ll hold it, but try not to use the arm for a while.’ He packed his bag and went out.

I sat up and looked about the flat – it was like a field dressing station in a blitzed area. I was stripped to the waist with a bandaged arm and Geordie sported a natty bandage on his little finger. He was drinking tea and he held out his finger like a charlady at a garden party.

The flat was a wreck. What hadn’t been broken by the burglars had been smashed during the fight. A chair with no legs lay in the corner and broken glass from the front of my bookcase littered the carpet. A couple of uniformed constables stood stolidly in the corners and a plain clothes man was blowing powder about the place with an insufflator.

The Inspector said, ‘Once again – how many of them were there?

Geordie said, ‘I had two on my hands at one time.’

‘I had a go at two,’ I said. ‘But I think that one of them had a bash at Geordie first. It’s difficult to say – it happened so fast.’

‘This man you heard – did he say “knife” or “knives”?’

I thought about that. ‘He said “knives”.’

The Inspector said, ‘Then there were more than two of them.’

Geordie said unexpectedly, ‘There were four.’

The Inspector looked at him with raised eyebrows.

‘I saw three men in the car that passed us. One driving and two getting in in a hurry. With one dead in the alley – that makes four.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘They would have one man in the car. Tell me, how did you come to get shot?’

A smile touched Geordie’s lips. ‘How does anyone get shot? With a gun.’ The Inspector recognized a touch of overexcitement and said dryly, ‘I mean, what were the circumstances?’

‘Well, I chased the little bastard down the stairs and damn nearly caught him in the foyer. He saw he was going to be copped so he turned and let me have it. I hadn’t reached him yet. I was so surprised I sat down – then I saw all the blood.’

‘You say he was little?’

‘That he was. A little squirt of not more than five foot four.’

‘So two men went down the stairs, there was one in the car – and one went over the fire escape,’ the Inspector summarized. He had a blunt, square face with watchful grey eyes which he suddenly turned on me like gimlets. ‘You say this man threw a suitcase into the alley.’

‘That’s right.’

‘We haven’t found it, Mr Trevelyan.’

I said, ‘The others must have picked it up. That’s when they nearly ran us down.’

He said softly, ‘How did they know it was there?’

‘I don’t know. They may have seen it coming over. I guess the car was parked in the alley waiting for the others to come down that way.’

He nodded. ‘What was in the suitcase – do you know?’

I glanced across at Geordie who looked back at me expressionlessly. I said, ‘Some stuff belonging to my brother.’

‘What kind of – er – stuff?’

‘Clothing, books – geological samples.’

The Inspector sighed. ‘Anything important or valuable?’

I shook my head. ‘I doubt it.’

‘What about the samples?’

I said, ‘I only saw the specimens briefly. They appeared to be manganese nodules of the type which is often to be found on the ocean bed. They’re very common, you know.’

‘And valuable?’ he persisted.

‘I don’t think that anyone with knowledge of them would regard them as valuable,’ I said. ‘I suppose they might be if they were generally accessible, but it’s too hard to get at them through two or three miles of water.’

The Inspector seemed at a loss. ‘How do you think your brother will regard the loss of those specimens, and his other things?’

‘He’s dead,’ I said.

The Inspector sharpened his attention. ‘Oh? When did he die?’

‘About four months ago – in the Pacific.’

He looked at me closely and I went on, ‘My brother, Mark, was an oceanographer like myself. He died of appendicitis a few months ago and I’ve just received his effects today. As for the specimens I would say they were souvenirs of the IGY survey in which he was engaged. As a scientist he would naturally be interested in them.’

‘Um,’ said the Inspector. ‘Is there anything else missing, Mr Trevelyan?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Geordie clattered his cup. ‘I think we were too quick for them,’ he said. ‘They thought they were on to a good thing, but we didn’t give them enough time. So one of them grabbed the first thing he saw and tried to make a getaway.’

I carefully didn’t mention that the case had been hidden under my bed.

The Inspector looked at Geordie with something approaching contempt. ‘This isn’t an ordinary burglary,’ he said. ‘Your explanation doesn’t account for the fact that they went to a lot of trouble to retrieve the suitcase, or why they used so many weapons.’ He turned to me. ‘Have you any enemies in Spain?’

I shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

He pursed his lips. ‘All right, Mr Trevelyan, let’s go back to the beginning again. Let’s start when you say you first saw the light on in your flat …’

It was after three a.m. before we got rid of the police, and they were back again next morning, to recheck the premises and to hear the whole tale yet again. The Inspector wasn’t satisfied but neither he nor any of his colleagues could pin down what was wrong. Come to that – neither could I! It was a great way to start my leave. His last word to me that morning was, ‘There’s been a fatality here, Mr Trevelyan, and that’s a very serious matter. I shall expect both of you to hold yourselves in readiness for the inquest. You are not under arrest,’ he added in such a way as to make me feel that I was. He strode out of the flat with his myrmidons trailing behind.

‘In other words – don’t leave town,’ I said. ‘There goes a very unhappy policeman.’

Geordie said, ‘He’ll be burning up the wires looking for an expert on manganese nodules. He thinks there’s something fishy there.’

‘By God, so do I! But he won’t find much. He’ll phone the Institute of course, and speak to Jarvis or some other big noise and get exactly the same story I told him.’

I got up, went into the kitchen and got a couple of bottles of beer from the refrigerator and took them back into the living room. Geordie eyed them and said, ‘You have some good ideas, sometimes. Tell me, these nodules – are they really valueless?’

‘I told the coppers the plain truth,’ I said. ‘But Mark seemed to have some curious ideas about nodule formation – still, the notebooks are gone and I can’t check up on his theories without them.’

Then suddenly I remembered something. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said and went into the bedroom. Sure enough, there it was – the little leather-bound diary, still lying on my dressing-table. The police would have had no reason to think it wasn’t mine, and hadn’t touched it.

I went back and tossed it to Geordie. ‘They didn’t get that. I meant to tell you – I found it in a pocket of one of Mark’s suits. What do you make of it?’

He opened the book with interest but I watched the enthusiasm seep out of him as he scanned the pages. ‘What the hell!’

‘That’s Mark’s patent Pitman variation,’ I said. ‘I doubt if old Isaac himself could make anything of it.’

‘What are all the drawings?’

‘Mark was an inveterate doodler,’ I said. ‘You’d have to apply psychological theory to make anything of those.’

I sat mulling over the events of the previous day, trying to piece them together.

‘Geordie, listen to this,’ I said. ‘Mark dies, and Norgaard, his colleague, disappears. Jarvis keeps his ear close to the ground and knows all the gossip of the profession, and if he says he hasn’t heard anything of Norgaard then it’s unlikely that anyone else has either.’ I held up a finger. ‘That’s one thing.’

‘Do you know anything about Norgaard?’

‘Only that he’s one of us oceanographers. He’s a Swede, but he was on an American survey ship during the IGY. I lost sight of him after that; a lot of comradeship went for a bust when the operation closed down.’

‘What’s his speciality?’

‘Ocean currents. He’s one of those geniuses who can dredge up a bit of water and tell you which way it was flowing a million years ago last Wednesday. I don’t think there’s a name for his line yet, so I’ll call it paleoaquaology – there’s a mouthful for you.’

Geordie raised his eyebrows. ‘Can they really do that kind of thing?’

I grinned. ‘They’d like you to believe so, and I’ve no reason to doubt it. But to my mind there’s a hell of a lot of theory balancing uneasily on too few facts. My line is different – I analyse what I’m given and if anyone wants to build any whacky theories on what I tell ’em, that’s their affair.’

‘And Mark was like yourself – an analytical chemist. Why would he team up with Norgaard? They don’t seem to have anything in common.’

I said slowly, ‘I don’t know; I really don’t know.’ I was thinking of the highly unlikely theory indicated in Mark’s missing notebooks.

‘All right,’ Geordie said. ‘Norgaard’s disappeared – you think. What else have you got?’

‘The next thing is Kane. The whole thing is too damn pat. Kane turns up and we have a burglary. He knew the stuff was coming – I told him.’

Geordie chuckled. ‘And how do you tie in the four Spanish burglars with Kane? Speaking as a non-theoreticist, that is?’

‘I’m damned if I know. There’s something odd about that too. I couldn’t place the accent; it was one I’ve never heard before.’

‘You don’t know them all,’ said Geordie. ‘You’d have to be born Spanish to be that good.’

‘True.’ There was a long silence while I marshalled my thoughts. ‘I wish I could get hold of Kane.’

‘You think there’s something odd about him, don’t you?’

‘I do. But I don’t know what it is. I’ve been trying to bring it to the surface ever since I saw him.’

‘Mike, I think this is all a lot of nonsense,’ Geordie said decisively. ‘I think your imagination is working overtime. You’ve had a shock about Mark’s death and another over the burglary – so have I, come to that. But I don’t think Norgaard has mysteriously disappeared; I think he’s probably sitting somewhere writing a thesis on prehistoric water. As for Kane, you’ve got nothing but a blind hunch. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If Kane is a seaman he’ll probably be down somewhere in dockland, and if you want him that bad I’ll put my boys on to nosing around a bit. It’s a pretty hopeless chance but it’s all I can do.’

‘Thanks, Geordie,’ I said. ‘Meantime, I’d better ring Helen and tell her I’ve been burgled. She’s not going to like hearing that Mark’s stuff is gone but there’s no hope for it. I can only play it down, tell her it was all worthless anyway.’

‘Are you going to pass on the notebook to her?’

I shook my head thoughtfully. ‘What notebook? As far as she’s concerned, it was all stolen. She could never make anything of that stuff of Mark’s – but maybe I can.’




V


I had nightmares that night.

I dreamed of a lovely Pacific island with white beaches and waving palm fronds where I wandered quite happily until I became aware that the sky was darkening and a cold, icy wind had arisen. I started to run but my feet slipped in the soft sand and I made no progress. And I knew what I was running from.

He caught me at last with my back to a palm trunk, and came nearer and nearer, brandishing a rusty kitchen knife. I knew it was the Dutch doctor, although he was screaming in Spanish, ‘Emplead cuchillo – cuchillo – cuchillo!’

He was drunk and sweaty-faced and as he came nearer I felt powerless to move and I knew he was going to stick me with the knife. At last his face was close to mine and I could see the individual beads of sweat on his shiny forehead and his lean dark face. It was the face of Kane. He drew back his arm and struck with the knife right into my guts.

I woke with a yell.

I was breathing deeply, taking in great gulps of air, and I could feel a slick film of sweat all over my body. The knife-scratch in my arm was aching. And I knew at last what was wrong with Kane’s story.

The bedroom door opened and Geordie said in a low voice, ‘What the devil’s going on?’

I said, ‘Come in, Geordie; I’m all right – just a nightmare.’

I switched on the bedside light and Geordie said, ‘You gave me a hell of a fright, Mike.’

‘I gave myself a hell of a fright,’ I said and lit a cigarette. ‘But I discovered something – or remembered something.’

‘What?’

I tapped Geordie emphatically on the chest with my forefinger. ‘Mark had his appendix out years ago.’

Geordie looked startled. ‘But the death certificate …’

‘I don’t know anything about the death certificate. I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know if it’s a fake. But I know that Mr Bloody Kane is a fake.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘I still know the doctor who operated on Mark. I’ll give him a ring and check on it – but I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps this Dutch doctor made a mistake,’ offered Geordie.

‘He’d be a damned good doctor who could take out an appendix that wasn’t there,’ I said acidly. ‘Doctors can’t make mistakes like that.’

‘Not unless he was covering up. Lots of doctors bury their mistakes.’

‘You mean he was incompetent?’ I thought about that, then shook my head decisively. ‘No, Geordie, that won’t wash. He’d see the old operation scar the moment he made his examination, and he’d know the appendix had already been removed. He wouldn’t stick his neck out by signing a certificate that could be so easily disproved – no one is as incompetent as that.’

‘Aye. If he wanted to cover up he’d put down the cause of death as fever or something like that – something you couldn’t prove one way or another. But we don’t know what he put on the certificate.’

‘We’ll soon find out. They sent it to Helen. And I want to find Kane more than ever – I want to nail that lying bastard.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ said Geordie. He didn’t sound too hopeful.





TWO (#ulink_1cb5657b-8d20-5308-9618-854d088e91f0)


I had no more dreams that night, but slept heavily and late. It was Geordie who woke me by shaking my shoulder – and incidentally hurting my arm once again. I groaned and turned away, but he persisted until I opened my eyes. ‘You’re wanted on the phone,’ he said. ‘It’s the Institute.’

I put on my dressing gown and was still thick-headed with sleep when I lifted the receiver. It was young Simms. ‘Dr Trevelyan, I’ve taken over your old office while you’re away and you’ve left something behind. I don’t know if it’s valuable or if you want it at all …’

I mumbled, ‘What is it?’

‘A manganese nodule.’

I was jolted wide awake. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘I didn’t. One of the cleaners found it under your desk and gave it to me. What should I do with it?’

‘Stick tight to it. I’ll pick it up this morning. It’s got some – relation to work I’m engaged on. Thanks for calling.’

I turned to Geordie. ‘All is not lost,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a nodule. You dropped some on the floor of my office, remember, and you left one under the desk.’

‘I don’t see what all the fuss is about. All along you’ve been insisting that the damn things are worthless. What’s so exciting about this one?’

I said, ‘There are too many mysteries connected with this particular lot to suit me. I’m going to take a closer look at this one.’

As I breakfasted on a cigarette and a cup of strong coffee I rang Helen and asked her to read out Mark’s death certificate. It was in French, of course, and she had some difficulties over the hand-written parts but we got it sorted out. I put down the phone and said to Geordie, ‘Now I want to talk to that doctor as well as Kane.’ I felt full of anger and frustration.

‘What was the cause of death?’

‘Peritonitis following an appendectomy. And that’s impossible. The doctor’s name is Hans Schouten. It was signed in Tanakabu, in the Tuamotus.’

‘He’s a hell of a long way from here.’

‘But Kane isn’t. Do your damndest to find him, Geordie.’

Geordie sighed. ‘I’ll do my best, but this is a bloody big city, and no one but you and Helen can identify him for sure.’

I dressed and drove down to the Institute, retrieved the nodule from Simms and then went down to the laboratories – I was going to analyse this lump of rock down to the last trace elements. First I photographed it in colour from several angles and took a casting of it in latex – that took care of the external record. Then I cut it in half with a diamond saw. Not entirely unexpectedly, in the centre was the white bone of a shark’s tooth, also neatly cut in two.

One of the pieces I put in the rock mill and, while it was being ground to the consistency of fine flour, I polished and etched the flat surface of the other piece. Then the real work began. By early afternoon everything was well under way and luckily I had had the place almost to myself the whole time, but then Jarvis walked in. He was surprised to see me.

‘You’re supposed to be on leave, Mike. What’s all this?’

He looked at the set-up on the bench. I had no worries about that – I could have been analysing anything, and the identifiable half-rock was out of sight. I said lightly, ‘Oh, just some homework I promised I’d do when I had the chance.’

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘What have you been up to, young feller? Saw something about you in yesterday’s press, didn’t I? And I had a chap in from Scotland Yard asking questions about you – and about manganese nodules. And he said you’d killed someone?’

‘I had a burglary two nights ago and knocked a chap off the fire escape,’ I said. I hadn’t seen the papers myself and it hadn’t occurred to me that the story would be public. From Simms’ lack of reaction, however, it seemed not to be exactly front-page news.

‘Um’, said Jarvis. ‘Very unfortunate. Place is getting like Chicago. Nasty for you. But what’s it got to do with nodules?’

‘A couple were nicked from my place, with other stuff. I told him they weren’t of much value.’

‘I made that plain to the Inspector,’ growled Jarvis. ‘And I take it he’s now convinced that your burglars were surprised and took the first things that came to hand. I gave you a reasonable character, by the way.’

I had my doubts about the Yard’s acceptance of the front story. The Inspector had struck me as being full of deep suspicions.

‘Well, my boy, I’ll leave you to it. Anything interesting?’ He cast an inquisitive glance at the bench.

I smiled. ‘I don’t know yet.’

He nodded. ‘That’s the way it is,’ he said rather vaguely and wandered out. I looked at the bench and wondered if I was wasting my time. My own knowledge, backed by that of an expert like Jarvis, told me that this was just an ordinary Pacific nodule and nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I had gone so far, I might as well carry on. I left the glassware to bubble on its own for a while and went to take photomicrographs of the etched surface of the half-nodule.

I was busy for another couple of hours and having to use my bad arm didn’t help. Normally I would have used the services of a laboratory technician but this was one job I wanted to do myself. And it was fortunate that I had taken that precaution because what I finally found astounded me. I looked incredulously at the table of figures that was emerging, breathing heavily with excitement and with my mind full of conflicting conjectures.

Then I became even busier, carefully dismantling the glassware and meticulously washing every piece. I wanted no evidence left of what I’d been up to. That done, I phoned the flat.

Geordie answered. ‘Where the devil have you been?’ he demanded. ‘We’ve had the cops, the press, the insurance people – the lot.’

‘Those are the last people I want to be bothered with right now. Is everything clear now?’

‘Aye.’

‘Good. I don’t suppose you found Kane.’

‘You suppose rightly. If you’re so suspicious of him why don’t you take what you’ve got to the police? They can do a better job of finding him than I can.’

‘I don’t want to do that right now. I’m coming home, Geordie. I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Have you eaten, boy?’

I suddenly realized that I hadn’t eaten a mouthful all day. I felt very hungry. ‘I’ve been too busy,’ I said hopefully.

‘I thought so. I’ll tell you what; I’ll cook up something in this kitchen of yours – one of my slumgullions. Then we won’t have to go out and maybe get tagged by one of the newspaper blokes.’

‘Thanks. That’ll be fine.’

On the way home I bought some newspapers and found that the story had already sunk with no trace. A local shop produced me a copy of the previous day’s press and the story was a short one, buried in the body of the paper, lacking in detail and with no mention of what had been stolen, which suited me very well. I didn’t want to be questioned on anything concerning manganese nodules. I’m not naturally a good liar.

When I entered the flat I found Geordie busy in the kitchen surrounded by a mouth-watering aroma, and a remarkably well cleaned up living room. I made a mental note never to have glass-fronted bookshelves again – I didn’t much like them anyway. Geordie called out, ‘It’ll be ready in about an hour, so you can get your news off your chest before we eat. I’ll be out in two ticks.’

I went to the cabinet for the whisky bottle and two glasses, then picked my old school atlas off the bookshelf. Ink-blotted and politically out-of-date as it was, it would still suit my purpose. I put it on the table and turned to the pages which showed the Pacific.

Geordie came out of the kitchen and I said, ‘Sit here. I want to tell you something important.’

He saw the glint of excitement in my eye, smiled and sat down obediently. I poured out two whiskies and said, ‘I’m going to give you a little lecture on basic oceanography. I hope you won’t be bored.’

‘Go ahead, Mike.’

‘At the bottom of the oceans – particularly the Pacific – there is a fortune in metallic ores in the form of small lumps lying on the seabed.’ I took the half-nodule from my pocket and put it on the table. ‘Like this lump here. There’s no secret about this. Every oceanographer knows about them.’

Geordie picked it up and examined it. ‘What’s this white bit in the middle?’

‘A shark’s tooth.’

‘How the hell did that get in the middle of a piece of rock?’

‘That comes later,’ I said impatiently, ‘in the second lesson. Now, these lumps are composed mainly of manganese dioxide, iron oxide and traces of nickel, cobalt and copper, but to save time they’re usually referred to as manganese nodules. I won’t tell you how they got onto the seabed – that comes later too – but the sheer quantity is incredible.’

I turned to the atlas and moved my forefinger from south to north off the shoreline of the Americas, starting at Chile and moving towards Alaska. ‘Proved deposits here, at the average of one pound a square foot, cover an area of two million square miles and involve twenty-six billion tons of nodules.’

I swept my finger out to Hawaii. ‘This is the mid-Pacific Rise. Four million square miles – fifty-seven billion tons of nodules.’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ said Geordie. ‘You were right about incredible figures.’

I ignored this and moved my finger south again, to Tahiti. ‘Fourteen million square miles in central and south-eastern Pacific. Two hundred billion tons of nodules. Like grains of dust in the desert.’

‘Why haven’t I heard about this before? It sounds like front page news.’

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have, but you won’t find it in the newspapers. It’s not very interesting. You’d have to read the right technical journals. There’s been no secret made of it; they were first discovered as far back as 1870 during the Challenger expedition.’

‘There must be a snag. Otherwise somebody would have done something about it before this.’

I smiled. ‘Oh yes, there are snags – as always. One of them is the depth of the water – the average depth at which these things lie is over fourteen thousand feet. That’s a good deal of water to go through to scoop up nodules, and the pressure on the bottom is terrific. But it could be done. An American engineer called John Mero did a post-graduate thesis on it. He proposed dropping a thing like a giant vacuum-cleaner and sucking the nodules to the surface. The capitalization on a scheme like that would run into millions and the profit would be marginal at one pound a square foot of ocean bed. It’s what we’d call a pretty lean ore if we found it on land.’

Geordie said, ‘But you have a card up your sleeve.’

‘Let me put it this way. The information I’ve given you is based on the IGY surveys, and the one pound a square foot is a crude approximation.’

I stabbed my finger at the eastern Pacific. ‘Zenkevitch, of the Soviet Institute of Oceanology – the Russians are very interested, by the way – found 3.7 pounds a square foot right there. You see, the stuff lies in varying concentrations. Here they found five pounds a square foot, here they found eight, and here, seven.’

Geordie had been listening with keen interest. ‘That sounds as though it brings it back in line as an economic proposition.’

I shook my head tiredly. ‘No, it doesn’t. Manganese isn’t in short supply, and neither is iron. If you started picking up large quantities of nodules all that would happen is that you’d saturate the market, the price would slip accordingly, and you’d be back where you started – with a marginal profit. In fact, it would be worse than that. The big metals firms and mining houses – the only people with the massed capital to do anything about it – aren’t interested. They already run manganese mines on land, and if they started anything like this they’d end up by wrecking their own land-based investments.’

‘It seems that you’re running in circles,’ said Geordie acidly. ‘Where is all this getting us?’

‘Have patience. I’m making a point. Now, I said there are traces of other metals in these nodules – copper, nickel and cobalt. You can forget the copper. But here, in the southeast Pacific, the nodules run to about 1.6 per cent nickel and about .3 per cent cobalt. The Mid-Pacific Rise gives as much as 2 per cent cobalt. Keep that in mind, because I’m going to switch to something else.’

‘For God’s sake, Mike, don’t spin it out too long.’

I was and I knew it, and enjoyed teasing him. ‘I’m coming to it,’ I said. ‘All the figures I’ve given you are based on the IGY surveys.’ I leaned forward. ‘Guess how many sites they surveyed.’

‘I couldn’t begin to make a guess.’

I took a sip of whisky. ‘They dredged and photographed sixty sites. A lousy sixty sites in sixty-four million square miles of Pacific.’

Geordie stared at me. ‘Is that all? I wouldn’t hang a dog on evidence like that.’

‘The orthodox oceanographer says, “The ocean bed is pretty much of a piece – it doesn’t vary greatly from place to place – so what you find at site X, which you’ve checked, you’re pretty certain to find at site Y, which you haven’t checked.” ‘

I tapped the atlas. ‘I’ve always been suspicious of that kind of reasoning. Admittedly, the ocean bed is pretty much of a piece, but I don’t think we should rely on it sight unseen. And neither did Mark.’

‘Did Mark work together with you on this?’

‘We never worked together,’ I said shortly. ‘To continue. In 1955 the Scripps expedition fished up a nodule from about – here.’ I pointed to the spot. ‘It was two feet long, twenty inches thick and weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds. In the same year a British cable ship was grappling for a broken cable here, in the Philippines Trench. They got the cable up, all right, from 17,000 feet, and in a loop of cable they found a nodule 4 feet long and 3 feet in diameter. That one weighed 1700 pounds.’

‘I begin to see what you’re getting at.’

‘I’m trying to put it plainly. The orthodox boys have sampled sixty spots in sixty-four million square miles and have the nerve to think they know all about it. I’m banking that there are places where nodules lie fifty pounds to the square foot – and Mark knew of such places, if I read enough of his notes correctly.’

‘I think you had a point to make about cobalt, Mike. Come across with it.’

I let my excitement show. ‘This is the clincher. The highest assay for cobalt in any nodule has been just over 2 per cent.’ I pushed the half-nodule on the table with my finger. ‘I assayed this one today. It checked out at ten per cent cobalt – and cobalt, Geordie, is worth more than all the rest put together and the rocket metallurgists can’t get enough of it!’




II


We ate Geordie’s stew and very good it was, and by midnight we had just about talked the subject to death. At one stage I said, returning to a sore point, ‘I wish I still had those notebooks. They were only rough working notes and Mark seemed to have gone up a lot of false trails – some of the assumptions seemed completely cockeyed – but I wish they hadn’t been pinched.’

Geordie sucked on his pipe, which gurgled. ‘I could do with knowing why they were pinched – and who pinched them.’

‘Then you agree that it has something to do with Mark’s death?’

‘It must do, boy. He got hold of something valuable …’

‘And was murdered for it,’ I finished. ‘But who killed him? Kane? That’s unlikely – it’s an odd murderer who travels halfway round the world to inform the family.’

That was a good conversation-stopper. We were quiet for some time, then I said tentatively, ‘If only we could get hold of Schouten.’

‘He’s on the other side of the world.’

I said softly, ‘I think Mark came across a hell of a big deposit of high-cobalt nodules. He wasn’t a bad scientist but, being Mark, he was probably more interested in the worth of his discovery – to himself. His theories were a bit startling though, and they intrigue me.’

‘So?’

‘So I’d like to do something about it.’

‘You mean – organize an expedition?’

‘That’s right.’ Saying it aloud began to jell all the ideas that had been bubbling up in me since the assay.

Geordie knocked the dottle out of his pipe. ‘Tell me, Mike, what’s your interest in this – scientific or personal? You weren’t particularly friendly towards Mark. Is it that you feel that Trevelyans should be free to go about their business without being murdered, or is it something else?’

‘It’s that and a lot more. For one thing, someone is pushing me around and I don’t like it. I don’t like having my home burgled, being knifed, or having my friends shot at. And I don’t appreciate having my brother murdered, if that’s really what happened, no matter what I thought of him as a person. Then, of course, there’s the scientific interest – I’m fascinated. A find like this would hit oceanography like evolution hit biology. And then there’s the money.’

‘Yes,’ said Geordie. ‘I suppose there would be money in it.’

‘You suppose damn right. And if you’re thinking in millions, stop it, because you’re thinking small – it could be billions.’

He wasn’t ready to be enthusiastic. ‘So you think it’s as good as that?’

‘As good as that,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s enough at stake for quite a few murders.’

‘How much would such an expedition cost?’

I had already been thinking about that. ‘A ship – plus about fifty thousand for special equipment – plus stores and running expenses.’

‘Running expenses for how long?’

I smiled wryly. ‘That’s one of the jokers – who knows in a thing like this?’

‘It’s a lot of money. And there’s over sixty million square miles of Pacific, you said.’

‘I know my job,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be going entirely blindfold. I know a hell of a lot of places where there aren’t any high-cobalt nodules. And there’s what I can recall of Mark’s theories – perhaps they’re not so fantastic after all. Plus there’s this – I’m sure we can make something of it.’ I held up Mark’s little diary, which I was keeping on my person.

Geordie slapped his hands together suddenly. ‘All right, boy. If you can find the capital and the running expenses – and God knows where you’ll find money like that – I can provide the ship. Would old Esmerelda do?’

‘My God, she’d be perfect for running on a small budget.’ I looked at him closely, trying not to show my excitement too much. ‘But why should you come into this? It’s a chancy business, you know.’

He laughed. ‘Well, you did mention a few billions of money. Besides, some little bastard shot off the top of my little finger. I’m not particularly interested in him, but I would like to get my hands round the neck of the man who paid him. And chartering tourists isn’t very much fun after a bit. I suppose you have some ideas about finance? I mean, without a tame banker it’s a non-starter.’

I had been thinking about it, for the last hour or two in between our bouts of conversation. The pieces seemed to be dropping into place nicely, so far.

I said musingly, ‘I saw Clare Campbell the other day – she’s in town with her father, attending some conference or other. He’s my goal.’

‘Who is Campbell?’

‘Jonathan Campbell – never known as J.C. A Scottish-Canadian mining man. Mark worked for him for a while after the IGY – something to do with a mining venture in South America …’ I trailed off and Geordie cocked his head enquiringly. Something about that statement teased at me but I couldn’t identify it and let it go with a shake of my head.

‘So he’s got money.’

‘He’s loaded with it,’ I said, back on the track. ‘He’s got the reputation of being a bit of a plunger, and this thing might appeal to him. He lost a packet in the South American business not long ago – something to do with mines being nationalized – but I think he’s got enough left to take a gamble on something new.’

‘How do you know all this about Campbell, Mike? I didn’t know you studied the financial pages.’

‘I was thinking of getting out of pure research after the IGY. The pay’s small compared with industry, so I thought I’d look about for a job compatible with my expensive tastes.’ I waved a hand around my modest flat. ‘Lots of other chaps did it – Mark was one – so I did a bit of investigating and Campbell cropped up.’

‘But you didn’t take the job.’

I shook my head. ‘He’d already signed Mark on, you see, and I didn’t fancy having Mark as a colleague. Anyway, I was asked to go to the Institute about that time – less pay, but a more interesting job. Mark left the IGY programme early and got out of pure research. I never actually met Campbell but I did once meet his daughter – in Vancouver. Mark had her in tow. They seemed to be pretty close – they would, she being the boss’s daughter.’

Geordie’s voice had become as cold as mine. ‘Poor stupid cow.’

I thought that she didn’t look like his description at all, and wondered how long it had taken for her to read Mark’s character. She hadn’t struck me then as the sort of girl to be taken in for long. But I hoped that nothing much had happened between them, lest it colour Campbell’s attitude towards me when I came to approach him.

‘How long did Mark work for Campbell?’

‘Not very long – about a year and a half. Then he pushed off into the South Pacific and teamed up with Norgaard, last I heard of it. I don’t know exactly what they were doing – they had neither a decent boat nor the right equipment for proper research, as far as I could tell.’

‘But if Campbell’s a mining man, what makes you think he’ll finance a deep sea adventure?’

‘I think he might,’ I said. ‘Metals are his business. Never gold or silver, nor the other end of the scale, the base metals. He’s dabbled in tin and copper and had a go at platinum once. Now it seems he’s concentrating on alloy metals – titanium, cobalt, vanadium and stuff like that. Now that rocketry is big business there’s a boom in these metals.’

Geordie asked curiously, ‘How does he go about it – his investing, I mean?’

‘He takes advantage of us scientific types. He employs a few good men – people like Mark, for instance – and the number varies from time to time. Most of them are geologists, of course. He organizes field expeditions into remote parts, spots a body of ore, puts a million or so into proving and development, then pulls out and sells to the real big boys at a profit. I heard that in one of his recent ventures he put in two million dollars and a year of his time, then sold out at a net profit of a million and a quarter. Not bad for a year’s work, eh, Geordie?’

‘Not bad at all. But I’d say it needs experience and a hell of a lot of cold nerve.’

‘Oh, he’s a canny Scot, all right. I hope he’s still in town – I’ll find out tomorrow.’

‘What about Kane – why not put the coppers on to him?’

I shook my head vigorously. ‘Not now. All they’d do would be to pass on a query to Tahiti and I’ve no positive faith in the activities of the French Colonial Police, especially when there’s a convenient legal death certificate handy. The delays would be awful, for one thing. No, I’ll see for myself – if I can get Campbell interested. I would dearly like to talk to Dr Schouten.’

Geordie rubbed his chin meditatively. ‘I’m thinking of making one or two changes in the crew if we go on this caper. I’d like a couple of blokes I know from the old days. I wonder what Ian Lewis is doing now? When I met him a few months ago he said he found life a little tedious.’

I vaguely remembered a tall, gangling Highlander. ‘What was he doing?’

‘Oh, he had a place in the Scottish wilderness that he said he’d be glad to leave. You know, I reckon I could get you half a dozen good chaps, all trained fighters and some of them seamen. I’ve got a couple anyway that I’d keep on for this trip.’

I had a dawning suspicion of what was in Geordie’s mind. ‘Hold on – what’s the idea?’

He said, ‘I’d like to see the bunch of thugs who’d stand up against some of your dad’s old mob. They may be getting older, but they’re not that old and they’re all trained commandoes. They’re not all settled down and married, you know.’

‘What do you think you’re doing – setting up a private army?’

‘Might not be a bad idea,’ he said. ‘If the other night is a sample of what to expect we might need a bloody army.’

I sighed. ‘All right, Sergeant Wilkins. But no one who’s married or has other responsibilities, and you’d better hold your hand until we get Campbell tied up. We can’t do anything without money.’

‘Ah yes, the money,’ said Geordie, and looked very sad.




III


The following morning, quite early, I had a visit from the Inspector and one of his men. Geordie was already out and I was impatient to begin my search for Kane, but tried not to show it. The Inspector was cagey and suspicious, but very casual. I think his trouble was that he didn’t really know what to be suspicious of.

He asked, ‘Know anyone in South America?’

‘Not off hand. No, I don’t,’ I said.

‘Um. The man you killed may have been a South American. His clothes were labelled from Lima, Rio and Montevideo. He could be from almost anywhere except Brazil.’

‘I think that answers one question. I couldn’t place the accent. What was his name?’

The Inspector shook his head. ‘That we don’t know, Mr Trevelyan. Or anything else about him, yet. Are you quite sure you don’t know any South Americans?’

‘Positive.’

He changed tack. ‘Wonderful thing, this science; I’ve found out everything there is to know about manganese nodules.’

I said dryly, ‘Then you know more than I do – they’re not really my line. Did you find it interesting?’

He smiled sourly. ‘Not very – they’re about as valuable as road gravel. Are you sure there wasn’t anything else in that suitcase that might have been of value?’

‘Inspector, it was just junk. The kind of stuff that anyone might carry in a case, apart from the nodules, that is.’

‘Looks as though Mr Wilkins might have been right, after all. You surprised the burglars before they could pinch anything else.’

I didn’t fall for that one – the Inspector didn’t for one moment believe it was an ordinary break-in. I said noncommittally, ‘I think you’re right.’

‘The inquest will be next Wednesday,’ he said. ‘You’ll get an official notification, both of you.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Then they were gone and I thought about South America. That was nearer the Pacific than Spain, but apart from that it made no particular sense to me. And then, belatedly, I thought of Mark’s connection with Jonathan Campbell, and Campbell’s reputed connection with some South American mining venture, and I had something else to chew on. But it still made no sense, and for the time being I gave up.

Finding a rich Canadian in London’s millions was a damn sight easier than finding a poor Australian. The rich are circumscribed in their travelling. The Institute gave me the address of the conference centre, and they gave me the address of the hotel Campbell was staying at, and I had him at the third phone call. Campbell was blunt and curt to the point of rudeness. Yes, he could give me half an hour of his time at eleven that morning – it was already nine-thirty. His tone indicated that if he thought I was wasting his time I’d be kicked out in the first two minutes. The telephone conversation lasted only that long.

At eleven I was at the Dorchester and was shown up to Campbell’s suite. He opened the door himself. ‘Trevelyan?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come in.’

He led the way into a room once a luxury living-room but now fitted out as a temporary office, complete with desk, files and secretary; he sent her out and seated himself behind the desk, gesturing me to sit opposite. He was a broad, stocky man of about sixty with a square, tanned face lined with experience. Somebody once said that after forty a man is responsible for his own face; if that’s so then Campbell had had a lot of responsibility in his time. His eyes were a frosty blue and his hair iron grey and grizzled. His clothes were expensive and only the slightest accent indicated his transatlantic origin.

I decided that attack was the best policy. I produced the half-nodule and put it on his blotting pad. ‘That assays at ten per cent cobalt,’ I said without preamble.

He picked it up and looked at it carefully, masking any curiosity. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘The bottom of the Pacific.’

He looked up and stared at me, then said, ‘Are you any relation of the Mark Trevelyan who worked for me a while back?’

‘He was my brother.’

‘Was?’

‘He’s dead.’

Campbell frowned. ‘When and where did he die?’

‘About four months ago – in the Pacific.’

‘Sorry to hear it,’ he said but perfunctorily. ‘A good scientist.’

I detected the careful note in his voice, and thought that here was someone else who had seen through Mark, or had had some example of how my brother went about his affairs. I wondered if it was a business problem, or if it had had anything to do with his daughter’s relationship with Mark. I couldn’t assess whether it was going to make things harder or easier for me.

He carried on looking at me rather than at the specimen. ‘Trevelyan – I’ve heard the name more recently. Oh yes!’ He turned and produced a tabloid newspaper from a shelf and shook it out. ‘Are you the Trevelyan mentioned here? The one who killed a man defending his home? An Englishman’s castle and all that stuff?’

I caught a glimpse of the headline: SCIENTIST KILLS BURGLAR. Quite mild, considering the paper. I nodded. ‘That’s right.’

He pursed his lips and put aside the paper, and then came back to business. ‘This is a manganese nodule. There are billions of them lying on the bottom of the Pacific. There are quite a few in the Atlantic too.’

‘Not many there,’ I said. ‘And the quality’s poor. Too much sedimentation.’

‘True.’ He tossed the stone and caught it. ‘The highest cobalt assay so far is a fraction over 2 per cent. That one came from the central Pacific. Where did this one come from?’

I looked at him blankly and shook my head. He smiled suddenly and it transformed his face – he had a very charming smile. ‘All right, I tried,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised how often it works. Do you know why I am able to reel off facts about manganese nodules?’

‘I was wondering.’

‘Your brother told me,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to fit an expedition a couple of years back. I must say I was tempted.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

He hesitated, then said, ‘I lost a packet in South America. It caught me off balance and until I reorganized I didn’t have any fluid capital. About that time your brother left my company, and he hadn’t left me enough to go on by myself.’

‘I hope you’re better placed now,’ I said dryly. ‘Because that’s why I’ve come to you – now it’s my turn to ask you to fund an expedition.’

‘So I gathered,’ he said, equally dryly. He touched the nodule. ‘I must say you brought more than your brother did. He talked a good story but he never showed any concrete evidence. You say this assayed at ten per cent cobalt?’

‘I assayed it myself yesterday afternoon – the other half, that is.’

‘Mind if I have this assayed – independently?’

‘Not at all,’ I said equably.

He laughed, showing his charm again. ‘All right, Trevelyan, I won’t need to. I’m convinced of this anyway.’

‘I’d prefer it if you did,’ I said. ‘I could do with corroboration. But I must tell you that what you’ve got in your hand is all the evidence I have to show.’

His hand clenched around the nodule. ‘Now you do begin to interest me. I think you have a story, Mr Trevelyan. Why don’t you tell it and quit beating around the bush?’

I had already decided that if we were to work together at all I must hold nothing back. It was only moderately risky. So I told him everything, and when I’d finished we were well past my original half hour. He listened in absolute silence until I was done and then said, ‘Now let’s see if I’ve got all this straight. One, your brother died out in the Pacific; two, a man called Nelson whom you have never heard of sent you a case which contained notebooks and nodule samples; three, Kane shows up and pitches what you think is a cock-and-bull yarn; four, the suitcase is stolen by presumed South Americans with additional violence including one killing; five, you retain one nodule, analyse it and find a fantastic percentage of cobalt; and six, you also retain a diary of your brother’s which you can’t even read.’

He looked at me for a long time and then said gently, ‘And on the basis of this you want me to invest maybe a million dollars.’

I got out of my chair.

‘Sorry to have wasted your time, Mr Campbell.’

‘Sit down, you damned fool. Don’t give up without a fight. I haven’t said I won’t invest, have I?’ He saw the look on my face and added, ‘And I haven’t yet said I will, either. Have you got that diary here?’

Wordlessly I took it from my breast pocket and handed it over the desk. He flicked it open and turned rapidly from page to page. ‘Who taught your brother to write shorthand?’ he asked disgustedly. ‘St Vitus?’

‘Basically it’s Pitman’s,’ I said. ‘But Mark adapted it.’ I could have gone on to say that Mark had always been secretive, never liking anyone to know what he was doing. But I kept my mouth shut.

Campbell tossed the diary aside. ‘Maybe we can get something out of it somehow – maybe a cipher expert can sort it out.’ He turned in his swivel chair and looked out of the window towards Hyde Park, and there was a long silence until he spoke again.

‘You know what really interested me in this improbable story of yours?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Those South Americans,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘South America has been unlucky for me, you know. I lost nearly ten million down there. That’s when Mark’s expedition went down the drain, along with a lot of other things. And now Mark has come back – in a sense – and more South Americans are involved. What do you make of that?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said.

‘I don’t believe in coincidence. Not when it happens like this. What I do have to consider lies outside your domain, perhaps – the complications of international law regarding mining, especially offshore, undersea stuff. International relations – so I have to know more about the areas you want to research. Financing. Distribution. Markets.’

I was a little taken aback. Perhaps I was too much of the research scientist – the hard facts of commercial dealing had hardly occurred to me. But on reflection I could hear no note of doubt or dismay in Campbell’s voice, only the sound of a man mulling over the forthcoming ramifications of the deal he was being offered – and liking it. There was undoubtedly the faint note of challenge in his attitude, and this encouraged me. I guessed that he, like Geordie’s old pal Ian Lewis, may be finding life a little boring at present and was attracted by the novelty of my proposition.

He poked the nodule with his finger. ‘There are two things necessary for industrial civilization – cheap power and cheap steel. What’s the iron oxide content of this?’

‘Thirty-two per cent by weight.’

‘That does it. The cobalt will make it economically feasible and the result is a cheap high-grade iron ore, a hell of a lot of manganese, plus some copper, vanadium and anything else we can pick up. Cheap metals, billions of dollars’ worth and cheaper than anyone else can produce. It can be tied into one neat, strong package – but it needs careful handling. And above all it needs secrecy.’

‘I know. I’ve already been stalling off a police inspector who thinks there’s more to the burglary than meets the eye.’

Campbell appeared satisfied. ‘Good. You’ve got the point.’

‘Then you’re willing to finance an expedition?’ I asked. It was almost too easy, I thought, and I was right.

‘I don’t know yet. I want to make some investigations of my own, enquiries which I can make and you can’t. And maybe I can find Kane for you. Besides, you may not be in a position to undertake anything for some time – you killed a man, remember.’ His smile this time was more grim than charming. ‘Not that I blame you for it – I’ve killed men myself – but let’s wait for your inquest before deciding anything.’




IV


It was six days to the inquest, the longest six days I’ve spent in my life. To fill in the time I got down to writing the paper that I was supposed to turn out. It wasn’t a very good paper as it happened; I had too much else on my mind to concentrate really well.

By the end of the week Geordie still hadn’t found Kane, though he’d got a lot of other things moving. ‘It’s hopeless,’ he said to me. ‘A needle in a haystack would be easier – this is like trying to find one particular wisp of hay.’

‘He may not be in London at all.’

A truism which didn’t help. But on the morning of the inquest Kane was found – or rather, he found me.

He called at the flat just as I was leaving for the court – Geordie as usual was out ahead of me and would meet me there. Kane was looking a little the worse for wear with bloodshot eyes and a greying stubble on his cheeks. He coughed raspingly and said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, Mr Trevelyan, but you did say I was to keep in touch.’

I looked at him in astonishment and choked back the questions that were on the tip of my tongue. I invited him inside and did a bit of fast thinking as I poured him a cup of coffee. Geordie and Campbell had as much at stake in this as I had, and besides I wanted witnesses when I questioned Kane. I decided to play it softly, though I could hardly bear to speak to him without losing my control.

I made myself smile pleasantly at him. ’Had enough of England, Mr Kane?’

‘It ’ud be a nice country if it wasn’t for your bleeding weather. We could do with some of this rain back in Queensland, my word.’

‘But you’ve enjoyed your stay?’

‘I’ve had a bonzer time,’ he said. ‘But my stay’s over, Mr Trevelyan. I got to gambling again. I’ll never learn.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

He looked at me hopefully. ‘Mr Trevelyan, you said you might be able to arrange a passage for me. I wondered …’

‘Do you have to get back to the Pacific immediately?’

For some reason that didn’t please him. ‘Not specially, no. But I’ve got no boodle. If I had some cash or a job I’d like to stay around a bit. I thought maybe you could …’

I said, ‘I have a friend who has a yacht which he’s fitting out. He and I hope to get in some sailing together, and I think he needs crew. How would that suit you?’

He took the bait eagerly. ‘That ’ud be just fine, Mr Trevelyan!’

I put an opened writing pad in front of him, trying to hold back my own eagerness. ‘Write down the name of wherever you’re staying so that I can get the owner to contact you,’ I said. ‘He’ll want to interview you but I’ll make it all right with him. And I’ll let you have something ahead of your pay, to cover your rooming costs. How’s that?’

He wrote an address down. ‘I’ll do that. Thanks a whole lot, Mr Trevelyan.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said generously. ‘You’ve earned it.’

I gave him a head start and then left for the court hearing. The encounter had been good for me, giving me something else to think about and making a vital connection in my story for Campbell. I had no time to tell Geordie about it, however, but savoured telling him afterwards.

The inquest was simple and straightforward. A doctor gave evidence of death, then I went on the stand, followed immediately by Geordie. We stuck to straight facts and didn’t elaborate but I noticed that Geordie kept his bandaged finger prominently in view of the coroner. My neighbour spoke and then the police had their turn.

As Geordie was giving evidence I glanced round the courtroom and saw Campbell sitting at the back. He nodded to me, then turned his attention to the proceedings.

The Inspector made an appearance and confirmed that he had found a gun, a Beretta automatic pistol, hanging from the right-hand coat pocket of the deceased. The foresight was caught in the torn lining. I felt a lot better after this because it had been one of the points I had made myself. I looked the coroner straight in the eye and he didn’t avoid my glance – a good sign. The lack of identity of the dead man was briefly discussed.

There was a surprise witness, at least to me – old Jarvis appeared to give expert testimony. He told the coroner what manganese nodules were and even produced one to show what the things looked like. The coroner prodded him a bit about their value and Jarvis responded in his downright, damn-your-eyes way. But that was just for the record.

Then suddenly it was over. The coroner took little time to decide that death was due to justifiable manslaughter. He wound everything up with a pontifical speech to the effect that while an Englishman’s home may be his castle, no man had the right to take the law into his own hands and that if a little more care had been taken, in his opinion, a death could have been averted. However what was done was done, and Mr Michael Trevelyan was free to leave the court without a stain on his character.

We all stood up when he swept out and there was a general drift to the doors. An official elbowed his way up to me and gave me a note. It was brief and to the point. ‘See you at the Dorchester. Campbell.’

I passed it to Geordie as he reached me to slap me heavily on the back. ‘I hope this means what I think it means,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you.’

We drifted out with the crowd and were eventually deposited on the pavement. A lot of people I didn’t know congratulated me on killing a man and getting away with it, some reporters had a lot of questions to ask, and at last I caught sight of the man I was looking for. I ran to catch up with him, Geordie behind me. It was Professor Jarvis.

He saw me coming, waved his stick and waited for me to join him.

‘Well, that went off all right, my boy,’ he said.

‘You did your bit – thank you.’

‘Damned fools,’ he grumbled. ‘Everyone knows that those nodules are basically worthless – not an economic proposition at all.’

‘I wondered if you had a moment to talk to me – here, rather than at the Institute,’ I asked him. There seemed to be no difficulty and we sat down on the low stone wall outside the courthouse, enjoying the thin watery sunshine.

‘I have nothing to tell you, young man,’ the Professor said. ‘I made a few enquiries about that chap, Norgaard, but there’s nothing doing. The feller seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘When was the last you heard of him?’

‘About six, seven months ago – when he was with your brother. They were fossicking about in the islands round Tahiti.’

‘When did Norgaard start working with Mark?’ I asked.

‘Now let me see. It must have been nearly two years ago, after Mark left that Canadian firm he was working for. Yes, that was it – after he had to leave the IGY project he went to Canada and was with that chap Campbell for over two years, then he left to join up with Norgaard. What they were doing I don’t know; they didn’t publish anything.’

His grasp of events was remarkable, I thought, and then seized on something he had said. ‘What do you mean – had to leave the IGY?’

Jarvis actually looked embarrassed. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have said that,’ he mumbled.

‘I’d like to know. It can’t hurt Mark now.’

‘It’s bad form. De mortuis – and all that, don’t you know.’

‘Out with it,’ I said. ‘After all, it’s all in the family.’

Jarvis regarded the tip of his highly polished shoe. ‘Well, I never did get to the bottom of it – it was hushed up, you know – but apparently Mark fudged some of his results.’

‘Faked his figures?’

‘That’s right. It was found out by sheer chance. Of course he had to leave. But we – the IGY agreed not to make any more of it, so he was able to get the job in Canada, after he resigned.’

‘So that’s why he left before it was over. I wondered about that. What was he working on at the time?’

Jarvis shrugged. ‘I don’t recall, but it certainly had to do with the underwater surveys. Manganese nodules, perhaps?’ Not too shrewd a guess, all things considered; but I didn’t like it. He went on, ‘I never did like your brother. I never trusted him and the fact that he cooked his books didn’t surprise me a bit.’

I said, ‘That’s all right – lots of people didn’t like Mark. I wasn’t too keen on him myself. And it wasn’t the first time he rigged his results. He did the same at school.’ And at university. Not to mention his personal life.

Jarvis nodded. ‘I’m not surprised at that either. Still, my boy, I don’t mistrust the whole Trevelyan family. You’re worth ten of your brother, Mike.’

‘Thanks, Prof.,’ I said warmly.

‘Forget all this and enjoy your leave now. The South Atlantic is waiting for you when you return.’

He turned and strode away, jauntily waving his stick. I looked after him with affection; I thought he would be genuinely sorry to lose me if the deal with Campbell came off and I went to the South Pacific instead of the South Atlantic. He would once more angrily bewail the economic facts of life which drew researchers into industry and he would write a few acid letters to the journals.

I turned to Geordie. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘Norgaard vanished just about the same time that Mark kicked the bucket. I wonder if …’

‘I know what you’re thinking, Geordie. Is Norgaard still alive? I do hope to God Campbell comes through – I want to do some field work in the islands.’

‘You had something to tell me,’ he reminded me. But I had decided to save it up.

‘I’ll tell you and Campbell together. Come with me to see him.’




V


Campbell was less crusty than at our first meeting. ‘Well,’ he said, as we entered his suite, ‘I see you’re not entirely a hardened criminal, Trevelyan.’

‘Not a stain on my character. The coroner said so.’ I introduced Geordie and the two big men sized one another up with interest. ‘Mr Wilkins is willing to contribute a ship – and skipper her, too.’

Campbell said, ‘I see someone has faith in your crazy story. I suppose that getting hurt added to your conviction.’

‘What about you?’ I asked.

He ignored this and asked what we would drink. ‘We must celebrate a successful evasion of the penalty of the law,’ he said, almost jovially. He ordered and we got down to business. I decided to keep the Kane episode to be revealed at the proper moment and first hear what Campbell had to say.

‘I knew my hunch about your South Americans would work out,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a pretty good intelligence system – you have to in my line of work – and I find that Suarez-Navarro are fitting out a research ship in Darwin right at this moment. It’s new business and new territory for them, so my guess is that they are heading your way.’

I looked at him blankly. That didn’t mean a thing to me.

I think he enjoyed my lack of comprehension because he left me dangling for a while before elucidating. ‘Suarez-Navarro is a South American mining house, active in several countries,’ he said. ‘I’ve tangled with them before – they’re a crowd of unscrupulous bastards. Now, why would a mining house be fitting out an oceanographical research ship?’

‘Nodules,’ said Geordie succinctly.

‘How unscrupulous are they?’ I asked. ‘Would they stoop to burglary?’ I didn’t mention murder.

Campbell folded his hands together. ‘I’ll tell you the story and let you judge for yourself. Once I had a pretty good set-up in South America, never mind just where. The mines were producing well and I ploughed a lot back in the interests of good labour relations. I had a couple of schools, a hospital and all the civilized trimmings. Those Indian miners never had it so good, and they responded well.

‘Suarez-Navarro cast an eye on the operation and liked the look of it. They went about things in their own smelly way, though. They had a trouble-shooter, a guy called Ernesto Ramirez, whom they used for that type of operation. He pitched up, got at the government, greased a few palms, supported the Army, and then suddenly there was a new government – which promptly expropriated the mines in the interests of the national economy – or that’s what they said. Anyway, I never got a cent out of it. They just took the lot and Ramirez vanished back into the hole they dug him out of.

‘The next thing that happened was that the government wanted somebody to run the mines, so Suarez-Navarro offered to take on the job out of the kindness of their hearts and a hefty percentage of the profits. I had been paying 38 per cent tax but Suarez-Navarro got away tax free since they claimed it was really government property anyway. They had a sweet set-up.

‘They closed the schools and the hospital – those things don’t produce, you see. Pretty soon they had a strike on their hands. If you treat a man like a man he kind of resents going back to being treated like a pig – so there was a strike. That brought Ramirez out of his hole fast. He called in the Army, there was quite a bit of shooting, and then there was suddenly no strike – just fifty dead Indians and quite a few widows.’

He smiled grimly. ‘Does that answer your question about the scruples of Suarez-Navarro?’

I nodded. It was a nasty story.

Campbell seemed to go off at a tangent. ‘I’m attending a conference here in London, a conference on mineral resources.’

‘That’s how I found you,’ I murmured, but he took no notice.

‘It’s a Commonwealth deal really but various other interested parties have been invited to send observers. Suarez-Navarro have two – you can’t keep them out of anything – but another one arrived last week. His name is Ernesto Ramirez.’ Campbell’s voice was hard. ‘Ramirez isn’t a conference man, he’s not a negotiator. He’s Suarez-Navarro’s muscle man. Do I make my point?’

We both nodded, intently.

‘Well, I’m going to hammer it home really hard. I’ve found Kane for you.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ I said.

‘You were going about it the hard way. I put someone on to watch Ramirez and was told that a man called Kane had a two-hour talk with him yesterday. We had Kane followed to where he’s in digs and I have the address.’

I reeled it off.

It was effective. Campbell said, ‘What?’ disbelievingly, and Geordie gaped at me. I enjoyed my moment.

‘Kane came to visit me this morning,’ I said, and told them both what had happened. ‘I suggest you get him down to the docks and have a serious talk with him,’ I said to Geordie.

Campbell frowned and then his great smile broke on his face. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask him a damn thing. Don’t you see what’s happening?’

Geordie and I shrugged helplessly. We weren’t quick enough for Campbell in matters like this.

‘Ever heard of industrial espionage? Of course you have. Every big outfit runs a spy system. I do it myself – don’t much like it, but I’ve got to keep up with the hard-nosed bastards in the business.’ He actually looked as if he enjoyed it very much. ‘Now let’s reconstruct what’s been happening. You got hold of something you shouldn’t have – from the point of view of Suarez-Navarro. Ramirez hotfoots it to England – he arrived the day before Kane came to see you, so it’s a cinch they came together. Kane comes to you to find out if Mark’s stuff has arrived yet, and he knows it has because you tell him so yourself. He spins you a yarn as cover – it doesn’t really matter what it is. Then Ramirez tells his boys to snatch the stuff but you surprise them in the middle.’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Does that make sense so far?’

Geordie said, ‘It makes sense to me.’

I said nothing. I was a little more doubtful, but if this served to keep up Campbell’s interest I was all for it.

He continued, ‘But something goes wrong – they leave the diary and one nodule. Ramirez doesn’t know this, but he does know you’ve contacted me and that all sorts of enquiries are out – including questions in court about nodules. Oh yes, I bet he was there – or someone for him. He must have had a shock when you came to see me. You see, he’d keep a tail on you as a matter of routine just to see if you did anything out of the ordinary – and you did. So what does Ramirez do now?’

‘I’ll buy it,’ I said. ‘What does he do?’

‘He lays Kane alongside you again,’ said Campbell. ‘You gave him the perfect opportunity – you practically invited Kane to come back. It’s Kane’s job to find out what, if anything, is in the wind. But what Ramirez doesn’t know is that you were suspicious of Kane right from the start, and this gives us a perfect opportunity. We string Kane along – employ him, feed him any information we want him to know and keep from him anything we don’t want him to know. We also keep him underfoot and don’t lose him again. That’s why you mustn’t ask him any awkward questions – not right now, anyway.’

I thought about it for a long time. ‘Does this mean you’re coming in with us? Putting up the finance?’

‘You’re damn right it does,’ snapped Campbell. ‘If Suarez-Navarro are going to all this trouble they must be on to something big, and I’d like to stab them in the back just for old times’ sake. I’ll put up half a million dollars – or whatever it takes – and I ask only one thing. That we get there, and do it, before they can.’

Geordie said gently, ‘It was a good idea of mine, wasn’t it?’

‘What’s that?’ asked Campbell.

‘Geordie’s recruiting a private army,’ I explained. ‘As he gets older he gets more bloodthirsty.’

A look passed between them for the second time that made me feel like the outsider. Without saying a word they were in full accord on many levels, and for a moment I felt very inexperienced indeed.

Campbell said, ‘There’s another thing. My doctor is troubled about my health, the goddam quack. He’s been pestering me to take a sea voyage, and I’m suddenly minded to accept his advice. I’m coming along for the ride.’

‘You’re the boss,’ I said. I wasn’t surprised.

He turned to Geordie. ‘Now, what kind of a ship have you, Captain?’

‘A brigantine,’ said Geordie. ‘About two hundred tons.’

Campbell’s jaw dropped. ‘But that’s a little sailing ship! This is supposed to be a serious project.’

‘Take it easy,’ I said, grinning at Geordie who was already bristling at any slight to Esmerelda. ‘A lot of research vessels are sailing ships; there happen to be a number of sound reasons.’

‘All right. Let’s hear them.’

‘Some of the reasons are purely technical,’ I said. ‘For instance, it’s easier to make a sailing ship non-magnetic than a powered ship. Magnetism plays hell with all sorts of important readings. But the reasons you’ll appreciate are purely economic.’

‘If you’re talking economics you’re talking my language,’ he growled.

‘A research ship never knows exactly where it’s going. We might find ourselves dredging a thousand miles away from the nearest land. Station keeping and dredging take power and fuel, and an engine powered ship would need a hell of a lot of fuel to make the round trip.

‘But a sailing ship can make the journey and arrive on station with close on full tanks, given careful management. She can keep on station longer and no one need worry about whether there’ll be enough fuel to get back. You could use a powered ship to do the job but it would cost you – oh, a million pounds plus. Geordie’s boat will be fine.’

‘The day’s not been wasted,’ Campbell said. ‘I’ve learned something new. I reckon you know your job, Trevelyan. What will you need in the way of equipment?’

So we got down to it. The biggest item was the winch, which was to be installed amidships, and storage space for 30,000 feet of cable below it. There was also to be a laboratory for on-the-spot analysis and all the necessary equipment would take a lot of money, and a lot of refitting.

‘We’ll need a bloody big generator for this lot,’ said Geordie. ‘It looks as though it’ll take a diesel bigger than the main engine. Lucky, isn’t it, that charter tourists take up so much space with luxuries.’

Presently Campbell suggested lunch, so we went down to the dining room to do some more planning over grilled steaks. It was arranged that I should concentrate on collecting equipment while Geordie prepared Esmerelda and got his crew together. Very little was said concerning the location, or the availability, of the strange treasure we were after, and I knew that I alone could come up with anything of use there. I had some heavy studying ahead of me as well as all the rest.

‘If you take on Kane it’ll mean we’ve got him in our sights,’ said Campbell, harping back to his favourite subject. ‘Not that it makes any difference. Ramirez is sure to have other scouts out. I’ll be watching him too.’

I’d been thinking about Kane.

‘Your review of the situation was very well in its way, but it was wrong on one point.’

‘What’s that?’ said Campbell.

‘You said that Kane spun me a yarn as cover, and that it didn’t matter what it was. That’s not entirely so, you know – we have independent evidence. The death certificate states the cause of death as appendicitis. Kane and Schouten both told the same lie and I’d like to know why.’

‘By God, you’re right,’ said Campbell. ‘We’ll get it out of Kane as soon as he’s served his purpose.’

Geordie grunted. ‘We’re going into the Pacific,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll get it out of Schouten. At all events, we’ll be at the root of it.’





THREE (#ulink_8095c0ac-4c93-5f18-baab-7bc7fc49893d)


It was nearly three months before we got away. You can’t begin a scientific expedition as though you were going on a picnic. There were a million things to do and we were kept busy on a sixteen hour day, seven days a week. The first thing I did was to hand in my resignation from the Institute. Old Jarvis didn’t take it too well, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it so he accepted the situation with reluctance. I wished I could have told him what I was doing but that was impossible.

Geordie assiduously recruited his crew and soon they began to turn up. He had kept on four of his own lads and had of course taken on Kane in place of one of the men he let go. Of the other six that he added, all were faces that I hadn’t seen since I had been a boy during the war, tagging around after my dad’s gang.

Ian Lewis detached himself from his croft with alacrity and Geordie made him first mate; he’d had years under sail and was almost as good as a professional. Ex-corporal Taffy Morgan came along; one night during the war he had killed six Germans with a commando knife in utter silence, earning himself the M.M. Danny Williams had also won the M.M., although I never found out what for since he was reticent about it. There was the burly bulk of Nick Dugan, an Irishman from the Free State. Bill Hunter turned up – he had made a name for himself as an underwater demolitions expert and was the only other regular sailing man among the team. And there was Jim Taylor, another explosives wizard – he had been very near my father when he was killed.

They were now all into their forties, like Geordie, but seemed as tough as ever. Not one had lost his fitness and there wasn’t a paunch among the lot of them. Geordie said he could have recruited twenty-five but he’d picked the best of them, and I almost believed him. I was confident that if we ran into trouble we could handle it.

Geordie was confident too, of welding them into a good sailing crew. What any of them lacked in knowledge they’d soon pick up and the enthusiasm was certainly there – although for the time being they knew nothing of the complications in which we were entangled. It was a straight research and survey trip to them all, including Kane, and any hints Geordie may have given his special team they kept strictly to themselves. As Campbell had predicted, Kane was sticking as close to us as a leech; Geordie had simply told him that there was a berth for him if he cared to cross the Atlantic with us, and Kane had jumped at the opportunity.

Campbell had gone back to Canada. Before he left he had a long talk with me. ‘I told you I had a good intelligence service,’ he said. ‘Well, so have Suarez-Navarro. You’ll be watched and they’ll know everything you do as soon as you do it, even apart from Kane’s spying. It can’t be helped. We’re deadlocked and we know it. So do they. It’s a case of we know that they know that we know, and so on. It’s a bastard of a position to be in.’

‘It’s like a game with perfect information – chess, for example. It’s the man who can manoeuvre best who wins.’

‘Not quite. Both sides have imperfect information,’ he corrected me patiently. ‘We don’t know how much they really know. They might have the exact location of the nodules we’re after, and only have to drop a dredge to prove their case, but perhaps they’re behind us in planning and need to stop us somehow first. On the other hand, they don’t know how much we know. Which is precious little. Maybe as much as, or no more than them. Tricky, isn’t it?’

‘It would take a logician to sort it out. Talking of knowing, have you made any progress with the diary?’

Campbell snorted. ‘I gave it to a top-flight cipher expert and he’s having his troubles. He says it isn’t so much the peculiar shorthand as the sloppy way in which it’s written. But he says he can crack it, given time. What I wish I knew was how Suarez-Navarro got on to this in the first place?’

My own thoughts were that Mark, cheated out of Campbell’s involvement – I guessed that’s how he would see Campbell’s loss, only in terms of his own disappointment – had approached them himself. But I still didn’t know enough about how Campbell viewed Mark to say so. It hung between us, a touchy subject that we both carefully avoided.

So he went off to Canada to further his own progress, we speeded up ours as much as possible, and it was with great relief that I heard Geordie announce one day that we were at last ready for sea. All he needed to know was where to head for.

I said, ‘Do you know the Blake Plateau?’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s just off the coast of Carolina. We’ll test the winch and the rest of our gear there, and it’s a long enough voyage for you to pull your crew together. I don’t want to go into the Pacific to find that anything doesn’t work for some reason or other. If there’s anything wrong we can get it fixed in Panama – they’ve got good engineering shops there.’

‘Okay. But why the Blake Plateau?’

‘There are nodules there. I’ve always wanted a closer look at Atlantic nodules.’

‘Is there any place where there aren’t any?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘They won’t form where there’s heavy sedimentation, so that cuts out most of the Atlantic – but the Blake Plateau is scoured by the Gulf Stream and nodules do form. But they’re poor quality, not like the ones in the Pacific.’

‘How deep?’

‘Not more than three thousand feet – deep enough to test the winch.’

‘Right, boy. Let’s go and scoop up some poor quality wealth from the bottom of the sea. We should be away in a few days now.’

‘I can’t wait,’ I said. I was in fact boiling with impatience to be gone.




II


We made a fair and untroubled crossing of the Atlantic. Geordie and Ian, together with the regular crew members, soon got the others into a good working pattern and spirits ran high. Kane, we were pleased to notice, fitted in well and seemed as willing and above-board as the others. Knowing that they were all curious as to our purpose I gave occasional rather deliberately boring lectures on oceanography, touching on a number of possible research subjects so that the matter of manganese nodules got lost in the general subject. Only two people retained an interest in what I had to say, and to them, in semi-private, I spoke at greater length about our quarry. One was Geordie, of course, and the other, not too surprisingly and in fact to my satisfaction, was Bill Hunter. Already our diving expert, his interest and involvement might well be crucial.

One afternoon they both joined me in the laboratory, at my request, to learn a little more. A quiet word from Geordie to Ian made sure that we weren’t going to be interrupted.

Geordie picked up a nodule which I’d cut in half – I had brought a few on board to help my explanation along.

He pointed to the white central core.

‘I suppose you’ll tell me again that it’s a shark’s tooth in the middle of this rock. You never did get around to explaining that, did you?’

I smiled and held up the stone. ‘That’s right, it is.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No I’m not – it happens often. You see, a shark dies and its body drifts down; the flesh rots or is eaten, the bones dissolve – what bones a shark has, it’s cartilage really – and by the time anything reaches the very bottom there’s nothing left but the teeth. They are made of sodium triphosphate and insoluble in water. There are probably millions of them on any ocean bottom.’

I opened a small box. ‘Look here,’ I said and gave him a larger white bone. It was as big as the palm of his hand and curiously convoluted.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a whale’s earbone,’ said Bill, looking over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seem ‘em before.’

‘Right, Bill. Also made of sodium triphosphate. We sometimes find them at the core of larger nodules – but more often it’s a shark’s tooth and most frequently a bit of clay.’

‘So the manganese sticks to the tooth. How long does it take to make a nodule?’ Geordie asked.

‘Estimates vary from one millimetre each thousand years to one millimetre each million years. One chap estimated that it worked out to one layer of atoms a day – which makes it one of the slowest chemical reactions known. But I have my own ideas about that.’

They both stared at me. ‘Do you mean that if you find a nodule with a half-diameter of ten millimetres formed round a tooth that the shark lived ten million years ago? Were there sharks then?’ Geordie asked in fascination.

‘Oh yes, the shark is one of our oldest inhabitants.’

We talked a little more and then I dropped it. They had a lot to learn yet and it came best in small doses. And there was plenty of time for talk on this voyage. We headed south-south-west to cut through the Bahamas and the approach to the Windward Passage. Once in the Passage we kept as clear as possible of Cuba – once we came across an American destroyer on patrol, which did us the courtesy of dipping her flag, to which we reciprocated. Then there was the long leg across the Caribbean to Colon and the entrance to the Panama Canal.

By then we had done our testing. There were minor problems, no more than teething troubles, and generally I was happy with the way things were going. Stopping to dredge a little, trying out the winch and working out on-station routines, was an interesting change from what we had been doing and everyone enjoyed it, and we remained lucky with the weather. I got some nodules up but there was a lot of other material, enough to cloud the issue for everyone but Geordie. Among the debris of ooze, red clay and deposits we found enough shark’s teeth and whale’s earbone to give everyone on board a handful of souvenirs.

Both Geordie and Bill were becoming more and more interested in the nodules and wanted to know more about them, so I arranged for another lab. session with them one day. I’d been assaying, partly to keep my hand in and partly to check on the readiness of my equipment for the real thing.

‘How did the Atlantic nodules turn out?’ Geordie asked. On the whole he did the talking – Bill watched, listened and absorbed.

‘Same old low quality stuff that’s always pulled out in the Atlantic,’ I said. ‘Low manganese, low iron and hardly anything else except contaminants, clay and suchlike. That’s the trouble in the Atlantic; there’s too much sediment even on the Blake Plateau.’

‘Why does manganese behave this way – why does it lump together?’

I laughed. ‘You want me to give you a course of physical chemistry right now? All right, I’ll explain it as simply as I can. Do you know what a colloid is?’

Two headshakes.

‘Look. If you put a teaspoon of sugar into water you get a sugar solution – that is, the sugar breaks down right to the molecular level and mixes intimately with the water. In other words, it dissolves. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Now what if you have a substance that won’t dissolve in water but is divided into very fine particles, much smaller than can be seen in a regular microscope, and each particle is floating in the water? That’s a colloid. I could whip you up a colloid which looks like a clear liquid, but it would be full of very small particles.’

‘I see the difference,’ Geordie said.

‘All right. Now, for reasons that I won’t go into now, all colloidal particles must carry an electric charge. These charges make the colloidal particles of manganese dioxide clump together in larger and larger units. They also tend to be attracted to any electrically conductive surfaces such as a shark’s tooth or a bit of clay. Hence the nodules.’

‘You mean,’ said Bill slowly, ‘that having broken down a long time before, the manganese is trying to get together again?’

‘Pretty well just that, yes.’

‘Where does the manganese come from in the first place – when it starts clumping, that is?’

‘From the rivers, from underground volcanic fissures, from the rocks of the sea bottom. Fellows, the sea out there is a big chemical broth. In certain localized conditions the sea becomes alkaline and the manganese in the rocks leaches out and dissolves in the water …’

‘You said it doesn’t dissolve.’

‘Pure metallic manganese will dissolve as long as the conditions are right, and that’s what chemists call a “reducing atmosphere”. Just believe me, Geordie. Currents carry the dissolved manganese into “oxidizing atmospheres” where the water is more acid. The manganese combines with oxygen to form manganese dioxide which is insoluble and so forms a colloid – and then the process goes on as I’ve described.’

He thought about that. ‘What about the copper and nickel and cobalt and stuff that’s in the nodules?’

‘How does the milk get into the coconut?’

We all laughed, taking some of the schoolroom air out of the lab. ‘Well, all these metals have certain affinities for each other. If you look at the table of elements you’ll find they’re grouped closely together by weight – from manganese, number twenty-five, to copper, number twenty-nine. What happens is that as the colloidal particles grow bigger they scavenge the other metals – entrap them. Of course, this is happening over a pretty long period of time.’

‘Say a hundred million years or so,’ said Geordie ironically.

‘Ah well, that’s the orthodox view.’

‘You think it can happen faster than that?’

‘I think it could happen fast,’ I said slowly. ‘Given the right conditions, though just what these conditions would be I’m not sure. Someone else doing research thought so too, though I haven’t been able to follow his reasoning. And I have seen peculiarities that indicate rapid growth. Anyway that’s one of the objects of this trip – to find out.’

What I didn’t say in Bill’s hearing was that the ‘somebody’ was Mark, nor that the peculiarities I had seen were contained in the prize nodule left from his collection. And there was something else I didn’t talk about; the peculiarities that led to high-cobalt assay. I was beginning to grope towards a theory of nodule formation which, though still vague, might ease the way ahead. I was becoming anxious to know how Campbell’s cipher expert had made out in translating Mark’s diary.




III


Ten days after leaving the Blake Plateau we warped into the dockside at Panama. At last we were in the Pacific, all my goals a step nearer. Campbell was waiting for us, jumped spryly aboard and shook hands with me and Geordie, waving genially at the rest of the crew.

‘You made a good fast trip,’ he said.

‘Not so bad,’ said Geordie complacently.

Campbell looked about the Esmerelda and at the crew who were busy stowing sail and clearing the decks. ‘So this is your crew of cut-throats and desperadoes,’ he said. He was in a jocular mood – a mercurial man. ‘I hope we won’t need them.’ He took my arm and walked me along the dock, amused at my wobbling land-legs.

‘I’ve booked you into my hotel for a night or so; there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a last taste of luxury before the big job. Geordie too, if he wants it. I’ll expect you both to dinner – you can’t miss the hotel, it’s the Colombo, right on the main street. You can tell me all about the trip then. Meantime I want to talk to you in private, now.’ He steered me into one of the waterfront bars that always seem to be handy, and I sat down thankfully in front of a large glass of cold beer.

Campbell wasted no time. He produced a biggish envelope from his jacket. ‘I had photostats made of the diary pages,’ he said. ‘The original’s in a bank vault in Montreal. You don’t mind? You’ll get it back one day.’

‘Not at all,’ I said.

He shook out the contents of the envelope. ‘I got the translation done. My guy said it was a bastard of a job – he only hopes he’s got the scientific bits right.’

‘We’ll soon find out.’ I was stiff with eagerness.

Campbell handed me a neatly bound booklet which I flicked through. ‘That’s the stat of the original diary. This one’s the translation. There are reproductions of all the drawings at the back. The whole thing looks screwy to me – it had better make sense to you or this whole thing is a bust already.’ His good humour had already evaporated, but I was getting used to his changes of mood.

I glanced through it all. ‘This is going to be a long job,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to be able to make any snap judgements here and now; I’ll look at this lot this afternoon, in the hotel room. Right now I want to go back to Esmerelda and sort out procedures with Geordie, pack my gear and go and take a shower and a clean-up.’

If he was disappointed he didn’t show it – clearly what I said made sense. And so it was not until I was lying, damp and half-naked in the blessedly cool hotel room a couple of hours later that I finally opened the envelope. The translation of the cipher was pretty well complete except for a few gaps here and there, but it didn’t improve matters as much as I’d hoped. The thing was disappointingly written in a kind of telegraphese which didn’t make for easy reading. It was a true diary and evidently covered the last few months of Mark’s life, from about the time he left the IGY, although there were few dates and no place names written in clear at all.

I wondered if he’d always kept such a diary, and decided that he must have done so – diary-keeping is a habit as hard to break as to develop. As to where the earlier volumes had got to, there was no guessing, nor did I think they would have helped me much anyway. This was the vital period.

It was, on the whole, an ordinary enough diary; there were references to shore leave, films seen, people mentioned by initials only in the irritating way that people have when confiding to themselves, and all the other trivia of a man’s life, all in brusque lack of detail. Mark had kept a brief record of his amours which wasn’t pleasant to read, but otherwise it was fairly uninteresting on the surface.

Then there were the entries made at sea. Here the diary turned professional with notes of observations, odd equations roughly jotted, analyses of bottom material, mostly sea ooze. Occasionally there were analyses of nodules – nothing very startling, just run of the sea stuff.

I waded on feeling that I might be wasting my time, but towards the end I was pulled up with a start. I had run my eye down the typewritten sheet and was aware that I was at last looking at something remarkable. It was an analysis of a nodule, though it didn’t specifically say so, and the figures were startling.

Translated from symbols, they read: ‘Manganese – 28%; iron – 32%; cobalt – 8%; copper – 4%; nickel – 6%; other 22%. Wow!’

‘Wow,’ indeed.

There followed analyses of four more nodules, all equally rich.

I did some calculating and found the average cobalt in the five nodules to be a fraction under nine per cent. The copper and nickel weren’t to be laughed away either. I didn’t yet know much about the economics of recovery but it was evident that this might be a paying proposition even with relatively primitive methods of dredging, depending on the depth of water. And I had reason to believe that this was not too great to be worked in. With more sophisticated equipment it would be better than owning a gold mine.

But there was always the snag – nowhere in the diary did Mark say where these riches were to be found. In the whole notebook there was not one place name mentioned. So we weren’t really any better off than we were before, except that scattered through the typewritten pages was the phrase, ‘Picture Here’ , with a number attached, and at the end was a sheaf of reproductions and a brief account by the cipher expert of these doodled drawings.

It is possible and indeed probable that these drawings are of the nature of pictograms or rebuses. A study of the pictograms leads me to believe that they must indicate place names, and of the 32 drawings, I believe I have successfully identified 24.

To illustrate: the rough sketch of the gas mantle with the word GRATIS beneath may well refer to the Australian town of Fremantle; the bearded man with the sword and the baby is probably Solomon, referring to the biblical story, and may indicate the Solomon Islands; the bearded man looking at a monkey may be a reference to Darwin in the Australian territory; the straight line neatly bisected may refer to either the Equator or Midway Island.

The fact that all these names occur in the same quarter of the globe is a further indication that one may be on the right track in such surmising. Other names tentatively identified are also to be found in the same geographical area.

Tracings of the drawings, together with possible identifications are attached. Of the eight drawings unidentified all I can say is that to solve these one would need to have a more precise knowledge of these geographical areas, together with the need to know a great deal more about the ‘artist’, since it is obvious that an idiosyncratic mode of thought is here employed, involving a person’s training, experience and interior feelings; in fact, a total life.

I looked up the analyses of the two non-standard nodules again. Coming immediately after them were two of the drawings, numbers 28 and 29. I checked them against the tracings. One was of a busty wench wearing a Phrygian cap with underneath it the words, ‘The Fair Goddess’. The other was a rather bedraggled-looking American eagle with the inscription, ‘The Disappearing Trick’. Neither was identified.

I leaned back and thought about it all. I knew that Mark’s ship had been based on Australia during the IGY – hence, possibly, the Australian references. Mark had probably been in the Solomons and might well have gone as far as Midway – he would certainly have crossed the Equator anyway. Did he go as far as Easter Island? I checked the tracings and found it – a rabbit apparently trying to hatch an egg, the traditional fertility symbols of Easter. That was one the expert had spotted too.

It was a hell of a big area in which to find The Fair Goddess or The Disappearing Trick.

I thought about Mark and his ‘idiosyncratic mode of thought’. The expert had been dead right there; Mark’s mode of thought had been so damned idiosyncratic that there had been times when I thought it wasn’t human. He had a strangely twisted, involute mind which delighted in complexity and deception, never taking a straight course but always heading ultimately for one goal – the eventual well-being of Mark Trevelyan.

All my life I had watched him cheat and scheme his way towards the things he wanted, never realizing that if he’d gone about his business in a straightforward way it would have been more efficient. He had a first-class brain, but he was lazy and always looking for short cuts – but you don’t find many short cuts in science and thus he tended to lag behind in his work.

I think he was envious of me for some odd reason of his own. I was two years older than he and when we were children he nearly beat himself to death trying to keep up, physically and mentally. The psycho boys have a term for it in their tasteless jargon – ’sibling rivalry’ – but with Mark it took an unhealthy turn. He seemed to see his whole life in terms of competition with me, even inventing apparent parental favouritism towards me where I could see none. The only reason that I know for his having elected to study oceanography was because I had done so and not, like me, out of any burning interest in the subject. He once said that he would be famous when I had been forgotten.

It was ironic in a way that he should have said that, because he had the makings of a first rate scientist with a theoretical bent and if he’d lived I’m sure he could have surprised us all – provided he wasn’t looking for a short cut at the time.

For years I’d avoided him, physically and professionally, but now I had to match my mind against his. I had to ferret out the meanings of his cryptic scrawls and it wasn’t going to be easy. Mark had almost certainly been up to something fishy – no high-cobalt results had come out of the IGY investigations, and Mark had such results. I thought about what Jarvis had said about Mark faking figures during that period, and about Mark trying to persuade Campbell into an expedition to look for nodules. It was beginning to add up.

I was interrupted by Geordie, banging at my bedroom door.

‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ he demanded. ‘We’ve got a dinner date with the boss.’

‘My God, the time’s slipped away.’

‘Found anything?’

I looked up wryly. ‘Yes, I’ve found something but I’m damned if I know what it is. It looks as though we still have to play children’s games against Mark’s tortuous mind. I’ll tell you about it when we’re all together. Give me ten minutes to get dressed.’

‘There’s just one thing first,’ Geordie said, hovering in the doorway. ‘Kane went ashore and sent a cable.’

‘Where to?’

‘We were lucky. I detailed Danny Williams to trail him – don’t worry, he’ll keep it dark – and he managed to hear Kane asking about cable rates to Rabaul.’

‘Rabaul! But that’s in New Britain – in the Bismarck Archipelago. Why in hell would he send a cable clear across the Pacific? Do you know who he sent it to?’

‘Danny couldn’t find that out. He should have bribed the counter clerk, but he didn’t. The boss says come to the lounge first – it’s early for a meal. He wants to talk to us there – about that, I guess.’ He pointed to the diary pages lying on my bed.




IV


The Colombo was a modern American style hotel. We went to the reception desk where I had signed in earlier and asked for Campbell, and were told that he was in one of the lounges. It was discreetly lighted and in one corner a trio was playing soft music. It was all very civilized and pleasant and a definite change from life on board Esmerelda. Over drinks I asked Campbell to bear with me in setting aside for the moment the matter of the diary, and instead listen while I brought him up to date concerning manganese nodules, to which he reluctantly agreed. He was at his most churlish but I knew that mood would wear off as his interest sharpened. He had already done some homework so I was able to cover the matter of nodule formation and distribution fairly quickly, feeling pleased that I had already brought Geordie up to that point as well. I came at last to the matter of nodule dating.





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/desmond-bagley/night-of-error-39786001/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.