Midnight Never Comes

4

When Chavasse turned, Peggy had withdrawn, closing the door behind her. Jean Frazer put down the tray on a small coffee table beside the fire.

'Better have a cup of tea, Paul,' she said calmly. 'You look as if you could do with one.'

Chavasse tossed the Walther on to the desk. 'Are you trying to tell me this whole thing was a put-up job?' he said to Mallory.

'A test, Paul. A practical test which I decided might save me a great deal of time and indicate just how true the reports I've been getting on you were. I must say you're looking remarkably fit.'

'And the girl?' Chavasse said. 'Peggy or whatever she calls herself. She's one of your people?'

'Margaret Ryan,' Mallory said. 'Nice girl. Not been with us long. A trainee on the special course. They all are here. A new place we opened a couple of months back. I think everyone put up a rather convincing show, don't you?'

'So did I, I'm afraid I've made rather a mess of one of your boys.'

'All in the game. Mind you, Peggy was beginning to have her doubts about the great Paul Chavasse, especially when you appeared to drink the coffee.'

'She missed out on that,' Chavasse said. 'And another thing. Her Russian wouldn't stand up for five minutes anywhere east of Berlin, not with that Dublin accent of hers.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Mallory said. 'She's an Irish citizen which can be rather useful. They don't even need a visa for Red China. An unusual virtue in this day and age.'

Chavasse stood in front of the fire, steam curling from the wet tracksuit and accepted the tea Jean handed to him gratefully.

'I'll run you a bath, Paul,' she said and went through into the bedroom.

'Yes, I really must congratulate you,' Mallory went on. 'You're quite your old self again, only more so. What would you like for breakfast?'

'Two of everything,' Chavasse said. 'And lots of strong black coffee, Turkish for preference. And would you mind telling me what this is all about?'

'Later, Paul,' Mallory said. 'You'll find some of your own clothes in the bedroom. I thought you might be needing them. Don't be long. We've got a lot to discuss.'

'I bet we have,' Chavasse said sourly, but as he went through into the bedroom, he was smiling and excitement moved inside him like a cold sword.

His favourite grey flannel suit was neatly laid out on the bed together with shirt and underclothes. As he paused to examine them, Jean Frazer came out of the bathroom.

'You think of everything, don't you?' he said.

She smiled and there was a touch of colour in her cheeks. 'It's good to have you back, Paul.'

She started to move away and he caught her hand. 'What's it all about, Jean? Something big?'

She nodded slowly, her face serious. 'Better let him tell you, Paul. You know what he's like.'

The door closed behind her and he stood staring into space, wondering what it was that Mallory had in store for him. But what the hell. Life began again. He went into the bathroom and stripped off the tracksuit.

'It really is remarkable,' Mallory said as Chavasse poured his third cup of coffee. 'If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I don't think I could have believed it. This chap Yuan Tao must be quite something.'

Chavasse paused, the cup half way to his mouth. 'So you know about him?'

'Naturally.'

'You must have had me watched pretty closely. Now that's something I can't understand. I thought you'd written me off?'

'Let's just say I didn't like to see you go and then I started getting daily reports which were more than interesting. Your friend could make a fortune if he set himself up in business.'

'He wouldn't be interested,' Chavasse said. 'He has one already, together with three factories in Hong Kong and a half interest in one of the biggest shipping lines in the Far East.'

'Yes, I was aware of that.'

'I thought you might be.'

'His niece seems a very attractive girl.'

'She's returning to Hong Kong next week,' Chavasse said. 'I bet that's something you didn't know.'

'What a pity. We'll just have to find something else to fill your time.'

'I'm sure you won't have the slightest difficulty.' Chavasse lit a cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke with a sigh of satisfaction. 'What's it all about?'

'To tell you the truth, I'm not sure.' Mallory went to the desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a buff file. 'Have you ever heard of a man called Max Donner?'

'The financier?' Chavasse nodded. 'You see him in the society columns all the time. Australian, isn't he?'

'That's right. Comes from a place called Rum Jungle, south of Darwin in the Northern Territory. There's a hell of a lot of development going on there now, but in Donner's day it was just a dot on the map.' Mallory opened the file and pushed it across. 'Have a look at the photos.'

Donner was a magnificent figure of a man, at least six feet three in height with a great breadth of shoulder, and dark hair swept back over his ears. The photos showed him in every possible aspect. Mingling with the stars at a film premiere, playing polo, shooting grouse, even shaking hands with Royalty at a Variety Club charity dinner and he was always smiling.

'How old is he?'

'Fifty.'

Chavasse was surprised. 'He doesn't look anywhere near that. He seems to live a full life.'

'He can afford to. At the last count he was worth at least a million and moving up fast. Not bad for an ex-Australian infantry sergeant with no formal education.'

The last photo showed Donner on his yacht in Cannes harbour, reclining in a deck chair, glass in hand, gazing up at the young girl who leaned against the rail beside him. She was perhaps sixteen and wore a bikini, long blonde hair to her shoulders, blowing in the breeze, half-obscuring her face.

'Who's this?' Chavasse said, holding up the photo.

'His step-daughter, Asta Svensson.'

'Swedish?'

'Right through to her pretty backbone. That was taken three years ago. She's nineteen now and very, very attractive.'

'I think Donner would agree with you to judge from the way he's looking at her on this picture.'

'What makes you say that?'

'He's smiling on all the others, but not on this one. It's as if he's saying, "You, I take seriously." Where does her mother fit in?'

'She died about three months before that picture was taken. She was drowned skin-diving off some Greek island or other, but you can read through the file later. I'll just give you an outline for the moment. It'll save time.'

He got to his feet, moved to the fire and started to fill his pipe. 'Max Donner is typical of a certain type of man who's rocketed to the top in this country since the war. Mostly they started with nothing and the boom in property and land values helped them along.'

'When did he arrive?'

'1948. Company Sergeant Major in an Australian infantry battalion when he was demobbed in '47. Good solid war record in the Western Desert, and New Guinea. He picked up the Military Medal there, by the way.'

'And how did he set about making a million from scratch in a strange land? I'd love to know.'

'Simple really, or at least he makes it look that way. The Sunday Times did a feature on him the other year. "The Man from Rum Jungle," they called it. There's a copy in the file. First of all he took a job as a salesman. Reconditioned car engines, then textile machinery. Fifteen hundred a year and a company car-good money for the hungry forties. Most men would have been satisfied.'

'But not Donner?'

'Not Donner. He went into partnership with a man called Victor Wiseman. They bought an old Victorian house in Kensington in January, 1950, for three thousand pounds with the aid of a substantial mortgage and converted it into four flats which they sold separately over the next six months for a total of seven thousand, three hundred.'

Chavasse pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. 'And never looked back.'

'Donner certainly didn't. Wiseman dropped out with his half when they reached twenty thousand and bought himself a restaurant in Clapham. You've got to take chances in the property game and he just didn't have the stomach for it.'

'He must have been kicking himself ever since.'

'I expect so. Our friend was doing so well by 1952 that he was able to form the Donner Development Corporation. One of the first outfits to get in on multi-storey office block building in the city centres. Later, he formed his own finance company. Hire purchase for the millions. The biggest golden goose of all.'

'I should have thought he would have been worth rather more than your million by now?'

'You should see what he spends. He believes in living life to the full and he's made some enormous donations to some of the new universities.'

'When did he get married?'

'1955. To Gunilla Svensson, widow of a Swedish stockbroker who'd handled Donner's affairs in Stockholm.'

'A love match?'

Mallory shrugged. 'It certainly looked that way at the time, especially if you go by what the gossip columnists were saying. I should think it quite possible. She was a very beautiful woman.'

'And what about the daughter. Presumably Donner's her guardian?'

'That's right. She has relatives in the States, but none in Sweden or this country. She was at Heathfield till she was seventeen then did a year at finishing school in Paris. She's spent this last year at Stockholm University studying Sociology.'

'Doesn't she ever come home?'

'She's stayed with him frequently in London if that's what you mean and he usually flies across to see her once a month.'

Chavasse nodded. 'Takes his parental responsibilities seriously then?'

'It certainly looks that way. From all accounts there can be little doubt about the genuineness of his affection for her.'

'And what about her?'

'One can't be certain. On the other hand she doesn't have a great deal of choice in the matter. Her mother left her a sizeable fortune, but Donner holds it on trust for her until she's twenty-five.'

'An interesting situation,' Chavasse said. 'But where does it all lead?'

'I'm not really sure. That's where you come in. About six months ago, M.I.6 handled a very minor espionage affair. You may remember it. An Admiralty clerk called Simmons was caught passing classified information to a man called Ranevsky, a naval attache at the Russian Embassy.'

'He got five years, didn't he?'

'That's right. It was all very small beer.'

'Didn't the Russian claim diplomatic immunity?'

Mallory nodded. 'M.I.6. had him for a couple of hours and then he had to be handed over to his own people. They flew him out next morning. The really interesting thing proved to be the fifty one-pound notes he'd passed over to Simmons before they were arrested. They were new notes and M.I.6. managed to trace them to a Bond Street bank where a cashier not only recognised Ranevsky's photograph, but also remembered details of the cheque he'd cashed.'

'Are you saying it was one of Donner's?'

Mallory nodded. 'Genuine, too.'

'What did Donner have to say?'

'He wasn't asked anything, Paul. That side of things was never mentioned at Simmons's trial. It wasn't worth wasting on such an insignificant event. They simply dropped the whole thing fairly and squarely into my lap and told me to get on with it.'

'And you've been checking on Donner ever since?'

'That's right and the deeper we probe, the unhealthier it looks. From Burgess and Maclean onwards, everywhere we dig, we seem to find Max Donner hovering on the outer perimeter of things. And not only here. France, Germany, Canada-he has business interests all over the place.'

'But Donner's a highly successful business man, a respected public figure?' Chavasse shook his head. 'What would he stand to gain? It just doesn't make sense.'

'Neither did the Gordon Lonsdale affair at first.'

'But Lonsdale was a Russian, a professional agent.'

'Who was a Canadian to all intents and purposes. Even now there is some doubt about his real name.'

'Are you suggesting that Max Donner might be another Lonsdale?'

'I'm not sure,' Mallory said. 'It's a possibility: that's all we can say for certain at the moment. Donner's parents were Austrian. He was born in Vienna in 1916 while his father was fighting on the Italian front. After the war, things were difficult and then his father came into a small legacy and they emigrated to Australia in 1925.'

'How did they fetch up in a place like Rum Jungle?'

'Like plenty before him, Donner's father fell into the wrong hands. With what was left of his legacy he bought what he understood to be a thriving cattle station. When they got there, they found a mud hole in the wilderness, a broken down shack and a handful of starving cows. Mrs. Donner wasn't built for that kind of life. She died in 1930.'

'When the boy was fourteen?'

'That's right. He and his father hung on for another year, then sold out for seventy-five pounds and left.'

'Where for-Sydney?'

'With a depression just beginning?' Mallory shook his head. 'They took to the road in the Outback following that great Australian custom like thousands of others. Donner's father died in 1933 at a place called Clay Crossing. We know that from the death certificate.'

'When the boy was seventeen?'

Mallory nodded. 'From then on, he was on his own. Just another swagman walking the Outback at a time when half the men in the country were out of work. He joined the army in Kalgoorlie the day after war was declared.'

'And you don't know what happened in between?'

Mallory shook his head. 'From the death of his father at Clay Crossing in 1933 to his enlistment in the army in 1939-a great big blank and I don't like it.'

'And what's he up to at this end?'

'I'm not sure, that's the trouble, but I could make a reasonable guess. For the past couple of years, we've been losing people in a steady trickle. People like Simmons. Not all that important, but important enough. Confidential clerks engaged on classified work, cypher clerks and so on. Thirty-eight in all.'

'Too many,' Chavasse said. 'Only a really efficient organisation could tackle such a number.'

'And an organisation that never misses. This is really classified information, Paul, but twice during the same period, we've been about to arrest a really big fish. In each case he's been spirited away.'

'Forty in all,' Chavasse said. 'That's really very good.'

'Add to those, eleven poor devils who having defected to this country and having applied for and been granted, political asylum, have also completely disappeared. And they've turned up again on the other side, by the way.'

'You're sure about that?'

'Certain. As a matter of fact we've just lost another this week. A rocket expert called Boris Souvorin. Even our American friends didn't know we had him.'

'And you think Donner's behind all this?'

'I'm certain of it. He's been hovering on the fringe in too many cases for my peace of mind.'

'Couldn't you pull him in?'

'On what charge?'

'What about that bearer cheque of his that Ranevsky cashed? Wouldn't that do for a start?'

'Not a chance.' Mallory shook his head. 'Everything would depend upon the bank clerk's evidence that the cheque Ranevsky cashed was Donner's. He wouldn't last ten minutes on the witness stand with a really good counsel having a go at him. Everything else is merely supposition and guesswork.'

'Which you happen to believe?'

'I've never been more certain of anything in my life.'

'Then what are you doing about it?'

Mallory applied another match to the bowl of his pipe. 'How well do you know North-West Scotland and the Hebrides?'

'I went for a climbing holiday in Skye when I was seventeen. I don't think I've ever been back. Why-is it important?'

'There's a place called Moidart on the north-west coast between Loch Shiel and the sea. About a hundred and twenty square miles of mountain and moorland, very sparsely inhabited. A wild, lonely place. Donner bought a house and ten thousand acres of deer forest up there about eighteen months ago.'

'Did he now,' Chavasse said. 'And why would a fun-loving boy like Max Donner suddenly take to the highlands like that? I thought Cap d'Antibes was his stamping ground.'

'So did I.'

'Is there anything in particular he could be after up there?'

'I don't think so.'

Mallory took a map of Scotland from a drawer in his desk and unrolled it. 'There's the atomic submarine base at Holy Loch, of course, and various missile testing ranges in the Outer Hebrides. At Lewis, for instance and South Uist and here at Fhada, south of Barra.'

'Any research work going on there?'

'Not within the meaning of the term, although there's some very interesting stuff being handled. We aren't quite the laggards in the rocket business that some people would like to imagine. No, the places I've mentioned are mainly used for personnel training and test firing. The training part is one of our NATO commitments and very important. Of course the French don't come any more, but we regularly train personnel from German army guided missile regiments.'

'I'd have thought there would be plenty there to interest Donner?'

Mallory shook his head. 'He wouldn't get within smelling distance of one of these places. Civilians aren't even allowed to land and as regards seeing the damned things go up …' He shrugged. 'Plenty of foreign trawlers, Russian and otherwise, fish those waters.'

'Then what's he doing there?'

Mallory tapped a finger on the map. 'There's Moidart and there's Donner's estate, Glenmore, a bare half mile from the sea. As I've already said, a wild, lonely place with few people about. A trawler, or even a submarine, could run in close most nights without being observed.'

'So you think that's the other end of his pipeline?'

'Certain of it. He had a similar house on the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales for six years. He moved when a dam project started five miles away.'

Chavasse nodded. 'I must say it sounds likely. Is Donner in residence?'

'He flew up in his private plane the day before yesterday.'

'Do you think he took Souvorin with him?'

Mallory shrugged. 'He certainly wasn't visible. No, I don't think he'd take that kind of risk. If he is behind Souvorin's disappearance, he'll have shipped him north by some other route. I'm certain of that.'

'And if he is there, how do we prove it? If this place is as isolated as you say it is, I'd stick out like a sore thumb.'

'I've taken care of that,' Mallory said, 'and rather ingeniously, though I do say it myself. There's a small estate about ten miles from Donner's place, called Ardmurchan Lodge. A five-year lease was offered a month ago with three thousand acres of deer forest adjoining Donner's property so I snapped it up and dug a friend of mine out of retirement to play tenant, an old M.I.5 man, Colonel Duncan Craig. He's seventy if he's a day. Officially he'll be your uncle.'

'And what am I supposed to be doing there?'

'You'll be on vacation. Lecturer in French Literature at the University of Essex. I've fixed the whole thing up officially. As a matter of fact, they're expecting you to start in October.'

'Presumably Craig's been nosing around up there already?'

'Not really, although he has sent us some useful information. He's an old man, remember. Active for his age, but still an old man. I was hoping he might strike up an acquaintance with Donner, but it hasn't worked out. He's met him three or four times. Apparently, Donner's always perfectly civil, but hasn't handed out any invitations to Glenmore House.'

'Then how do I get in?'

Mallory held up the photo of Donner and his stepdaughter. 'There's always the girl.'

Chavasse frowned. 'How?'

'Wait and see.' Mallory pressed a buzzer on his desk.

A moment later, the door opened and Peggy Ryan entered. She moved to the desk, a slight, calm smile on her face. 'You wanted me, Mr. Mallory?'

'Yes, Peggy. Tell Mr. Chavasse about Asta Svensson.'

Peggy turned to face him. 'I was enrolled at the University of Stockholm at the beginning of last term, ostensibly as an exchange student.'

'The idea being to cultivate Asta Svensson's acquaintance?'

She nodded. 'She's a nice girl, Mr. Chavasse. We became great friends.'

'What about Donner? How does she get on with him?'

'I think she's a little afraid of him. He visited her twice while I was there. Nothing's too good for her as far as he's concerned. He's taking her on a tour of the Far East this vacation.'

'When do they leave?'

'He's joining Asta in Stockholm ten days from now. They're to fly from there.' She smiled. 'He's in for a surprise, though.'

'What do you mean?'

'This place of his in Scotland-Asta's never been. Apparently he's always fobbed her off with grimy old Nice or Cannes or somewhere instead.'

'So she's decided to take the law into her own hands?'

'If she hasn't changed her plans since I left her four days ago, she should be flying in to Glasgow tomorrow morning. She intends to carry on from there by train and arrive unannounced. Poor kid-I hope she makes out all right.'

'You liked her, didn't you?'

'A lot better than her step-father. He's the kind of man who smiles with his face only, never with his eyes.'

'And you don't think she's mixed up in his affairs?'

Peggy shook her head firmly. 'Not a chance.'

Chavasse nodded. 'All right, Peggy. Thanks.'

The Irish girl looked at Mallory who nodded. She moved to the door, opened it and turned with a smile. 'And Mr. Chavasse, I don't know just how susceptible you are, but I'd better warn you. I don't think you've ever seen anything in a skirt that could be an improvement on Asta Svensson.'

The door closed before he could reply. Mallory chuckled and took several more photos out of the folder. 'Better have a look at these, Paul. I think you'll see what she means.'

Chavasse only needed to look at the first one to see what three years had done to the child in the bikini. She gazed out at him calmly, lips slightly parted, the hair, so blonde that it was almost white, hanging to her shoulders. She was standing on a sand dune, the sea behind her, the strong sunlight outlining her firm young thighs perfectly through the thin cotton of the simple dress she wore. And those eyes. They seemed to look through and beyond him and his throat went dry. It was as if he had been waiting for this girl all his life.