Terror's Cradle

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I blinked at them, looking from one to another in amazement and something close to despair.

I'd been so certain I'd got away clean, so certain nobody could know where I was! I'd been sure that message about Norway would send them off on a wrong tack. Elliot, grim-faced, looked at me briefly. Then he said, Come with us. Don't try anything.'

I stared at him, still finding it almost impossible to accept the evidence of my eyes. 'How

?' I said. 'How the hell–'

`You're so damn smart,' Willingham sneered. 'All clever tricks.'

Elliot said sharply, 'That's enough ! Let's go, huh?'

They had a car at the end of the street. Not that it was needed. We went only a few hundred yards, then drew up outside a stone-built, square Victorian building on the hill overlooking Lerwick harbour. Outside hung the familiar blue lamp with the word Police reversed out in neat white lettering. They led me inside in silence. The duty constable raised a heavy oak counter flap to admit us to the deeper recesses. After that we went upstairs to a quiet room on the first floor. Willingham closed the door behind us, locked it and put the key in his pocket.

For no particular reason I strolled across to the window and looked out over the busy little harbour. Behind me, Willingham said, 'Not this time. There's no way out now.'

I turned to face them, two contrasting men : the thin, saturnine Elliot, grim-mouthed and watchful; Willingham red-faced and angry, square and squat as a bad-tempered boar. Elliot looked at me steadily from behind his heavy spectacles. 'It's no game, Sellers. Nobody's playing around.' I took a deep breath. 'Least of all me.'

`You sure act that way. This isn't some ingenious newspaper story you're chasing. Not fun and games and a big by-line.'

I returned his stare. 'You'd better tell me what it is, then. As I remember, this morning you didn't know.' God, was it only this morning! London this morning? Gothenburg only this morning?

He said, 'We still don't. We knew the plan. We knew how the information was coming out. You know that. But we don't know what that information is.'

`What makes you so sure it's important? It could be some crazy misunderstanding.'

He nodded. 'Sure it could. But it isn't. Reaction's too fierce. It had to be something big or that bunch of Russian Jews couldn't use it to twist the Soviet Government's arm. And if it's that big, we've got to know, understand that. We . . . have . . . got . . . to . . . know. Your government and mine.'

Ànd you think I know?'

`More than you're saying,' Willingham said harshly. 'A hell of a lot more.'

`Let's cool it,' Elliot said. 'There's no mileage in hate, for any of us. Who've you come to see up here?'

I said, 'Great Aunt Gertrude.'

He looked at me stonily. 'We'll find out, Sellers. Just like we found out where you were.'

Ìn time?'

`Maybe not.'

I said, 'Maybe your friend could beat it out of me.' Willingham was staring at me angrily.

'Don't think I couldn't.'

`Who did you come to see?' Elliot asked again. `Sorry.'

`Look, Sellers, you're an intelligent man— '

Ì know the penalties, if that's what you mean. Obstruction, withholding information. You'll find other things. I don't much care. It's the other penalties, to other people, Alison Hay for one, that I'm thinking about.'

'I know it.' He gave a little sigh. 'Okay, let's tackle it from another angle. Let's forget the guy you came here to see. Let's find out what else you know. See if we can get any closer.'

Ànd then?'

'And then we see. You found something in her room at Gothenburg. What?'

`Sorry.'

`You found out something else in London. It sent you chasing up here. What was that?'

'Sorry again.'

He said, 'It's a simple line of questioning. It can go on all night. It can get rough.'

'I can imagine.'

'I doubt it,' Willingham said. 'I doubt it very much.'

'Nice man and nasty man,' I said. 'I'm familiar with the technique. I watch TV. A punch in the kidneys from one, then a cigarette and kindly words from the other. You're on my side. He's not. Etcetera.'

Elliot gave a thin smile. 'It even works. Believe that. But we don't need it, Sellers. Listen, we finally got to the papers in the girl's room. The Swedish police didn't like it. It took time. High level talking, but we did it. There was nothing. Nothing for us. But there was something for you, right?'

I didn't answer.

'Okay, so keep talking. We wanted you in Gothenburg in the first place because you know the girl well.'

'You wanted me there?' I said.

'That's, right.'

I stared at him. 'It was only by chance I was there at all.'

'Sure,' he said. 'You were in Vegas. You told me. It wasn't too convenient. Not when we needed you in Gothenburg.' There was a tinge of complacency in his tone. I was beginning to see it, but I didn't believe it. Not at that moment. I said, 'Get out of town? Those cruisers on the lake?'

Elliot nodded. 'Neat, wasn't it?'

'Christ, you—'

'Sellers, we had to get you out. Right? You're a name correspondent, we couldn't just kick your ass the hell out of the United States. Too much grief that way. Bad news for everybody and maybe you wouldn't have gone to Gothenburg. You see, I'm levelling.'

I said angrily, 'I was bloody near killed!'

'Quiet place. Few guys with rifles and orders to miss.,

Couple of phone calls. Then you're on the plane. So am I.'

I was thinking about that desperate chase in the ghastly

heat of the Valley of Fire. The way I'd been shepherded, hunted, turned into a shaking bundle of sweaty fear, crouching exhausted among those hellish rocks. He said, 'We wanted her found.'

`Not her,' I said savagely. 'You don't give a damn for her. You want what some bastard loaded on to her.'

Elliot simply watched me for a moment. Then he said, `There's a half-dozen big questions about the Soviets that need answering right now. Big ones. I'm not going to give you a lot of mullarkey about world peace. But they matter. All of them. And there's something halfway out in the open here, Sellers. We've got to know what it is. When we do, if we can, we'll help you. Nobody wants innocent victims.'

`But it's just too bad if somebody is the innocent victim, eh?'

He hesitated and then committed himself. 'That's right. It's too bad. But I said we'll help you if we can. What alternative have you got? You're here. You'll be held here. You're helpless. There's nothing you can do. Right?'

I nodded wearily, knowing what Elliot said was true. I was in a little box at the end of the road and nobody was going to let me out. There was no way for me to reach Anderson now.

Elliot said, 'Help us. We help you. A deal?'

Ìt's a bloody awful deal!'

He thought he was winning and gave a satisfied little nod. `Not the best. It's a sticky world.'

`What happens,' I asked, 'after all this? Do I stay locked up?'

`We'll cross that when we have to. What do you know, Sellers?'

`Very little.'

`Great. It's gonna be a long hard night.'

Willingham said, 'You can't play it soft with one like this.'

Ì can try. What did you find in the girl's room, Sellers?' `Nothing.'

Elliot sighed softly. 'Oh, Jesus! I thought— '

I said, 'I'll tell you why I'm here, though. She's got a friend up here.'

`Who?'

Ì don't know,' I lied. 'I just know she's got a close friend in the Shetlands.'

Ìt's not enough. You didn't fly up here just because she has a friend.'

À close friend. She was out of the hotel quite a while. You think and I think that she got, rid of whatever it was she was carrying then. I think the fire in the hotel letter box had scared her off that and she posted it elsewhere.'

Willingham said, 'Who's Anderson, Jarlshof, Sandnes, Norway?'

`Who knows?' I said. 'Who's Brown, Smith Street, Cardiff, Wales? I was sending you in the wrong direction.' At least they hadn't discovered yet that there was another Sandness, another Jarlshof. They were in the police station but not using the knowledge it contained; playing things too close to their chests. If they'd mentioned either word to one of the local coppers . . . but the instinct for secrecy was too strong. Willingham grinned. 'You were pathetically easy to follow. That call from Elstree. From Elstree! You were tracked on radar the whole way. Bloody amateurs!'

I said to Elliot. 'Are we talking seriously? Or is your dog going to bite me?'

`Go on,' he said softly.

`She's got a friend in the Shetlands. You can't get much more remote than this. Nobody'd look here. You wouldn't be looking in this direction if I hadn't led you here. Nor would anyone else.'

Elliot said sourly, 'I don't think I believe you, Sellers.'

I shrugged. 'You told me I'd no alternative. Neither have you. But there is something else.'

Òkay?'

I fished in my inside jacket pocket, pulled out the wad of photocopies I'd made and begun to unfold them.

`That's why there was nothing,' Elliot said. 'You took those papers from her room.'

I shook my head. 'This wasn't in her room.'

`Her desk, then.'

`Not there either.' I was straightening the folds, sorting out the photocopy I remembered. I put it on the table and flattened the creases with my hand. It wasn't a particularly good copy; the folds had shaken off some of the black xerox powder, and my hand brushed off more. 'This was at the printing works.'

Elliot came and stood beside me to look at it. The title Russian Life was blocked in sketchily across the top of the rough layout.

`Front cover, right?'

I said, 'Alsa didn't draw this one'

He glanced sideways at me quickly. 'You sure?'

`You can see the difference. The others are her own roughs. This one was done by an artist.'

`So?'

`So who drew it and why was she carrying it?' I said. `She didn't have an artist on hand in Sweden, so she brought it out of Russia with the rest. Maybe she didn't even know she'd got it. It's another thing somebody loaded on to her.'

`Mm.' He was studying the design, frowning. 'Those flags. What d'you reckon they mean?'

Ìt's a layout gimmick, I should think. You see the flags are only drawn in outline. I'd guess the idea was to put a picture inside each flag. It's not original and it's not brilliant, but that's what I think it is.'

Elliot studied the paper in silence for a while, then straightened. 'Maybe there's something. I don't see what. It looks like a layout. No more than that.'

I said, 'You've missed the point. It's a lousy copy and the lines have faded, but the flags are supposed to be stuck in a map of European Russia.'

He looked again. 'Yeah. I see it now!' There was excitement in his voice. 'Any ideas what the flags represent?' 'None.'

His excitement, flattened. 'If she was gonna put pictures in those slots, what pictures would they be?'

'I don't know. Maybe the flags represent cities. But it's not accurate finished artwork. It's a freehand job.' Then I noticed something. I'd missed it earlier, in the plane, when I'd studied the thing. 'But look at these. Look at the flag-sticks. The pencil lines are precise, aren't they? A neat finish to each stroke. No, hang on !' I picked up the paper and held it to the light. 'Look at the start of each stroke! That's precise, everything else is rough pencil, but not that ! Whoever drew this started the stroke at the bottom, at a precise point, and drew upward only a little way, then the line goes free again. No artist would do that, until he was doing the finished job.'

Elliot turned to Willingham.. 'Go get a map. Any kind of map. An atlas will do.'

Willingham looked unhappy. 'It's half-past eleven. Where the hell–'

'I don't care where,' Elliot said savagely. 'It's your country we're in. Get one. We waited ten minutes, then there was a knock on the door. Elliot opened it and the station sergeant came in with a blue school atlas in his hand. 'You want this, sir?'

'Yeah, thanks.' Elliot took it quickly. 'That's all, sergeant.'

'Yes, sir. Just one thing, sir. It belongs to my lad. I went away home to get it. He'll be needing it for the school tomorrow.'

'He'll be – !' Elliot gave a short surprised laugh. 'Okay, sergeant. He'll have it. Thanks a lot. Where's Mr Willingham?'

'Downstairs, sir. Said he'd be up in a moment.'

`Right.' Elliot opened the dog-eared atlas, which looked as though it served more often as a classroom weapon than as an instrument of learning. 'Okay, here we have it. European Russia.' He picked up the photocopy, laid it over the map

and grinned. 'Wrong scale, naturally.'

I said, 'We can work it out, I think. Fetch that desk lamp over here.'

I bent the spine of the atlas back, holding all the other pages out of the way, then told him to hold the map of Russia against the lamp. I picked up the photocopy. The paper was thickish, but it might still work. I held it up and moved it back and forth until the line of the eastern border of the Soviet Union and the shapes of the Gulf of Bothnia, the White Sea and the Black Sea coincided. Then I tried to hold it steady and see what places on the map coincided with the flagsticks. It took a few minutes. Each time I identified a city Elliot marked the atlas with a pen, then we started the alignment all over again and picked out the next place.

Finally I could put the photocopy down and together we

He was running his eyes over the names again. 'Moscow. Orel, Sumy, Kremenchug, Gorlovka, Zaporozhye, Pervomaysk, Vinnitsa.

`Well?'

Elliot scowled. 'Small places, most of these. Some I never even heard of.'

`So it's no help?'

He was running his eyes over the names again. 'Moscow. Okay, Moscow. Anything could be happening there. But these others. We'll need to get a real analysis done on this. See what collated intelligence makes of it. And that'll take time, damn it.'

I said, 'Maybe it's just a layout. No more.'

`Maybe.' Elliot's tone meant he didn't believe it. I didn't' either. '

`Missile sites?' I asked in my innocence.

Àh, hell no. We know the missile sites.' He read the words aloud again, one after the other, trying to worry sense out of the string of names. The type in the, school atlas was small and Elliot had bent close to the paper to read it. It occurred to me suddenly that I could hit him and try to get away. I straightened and stood listening as he pronounced the Russian names. He said without looking up,

`Don't try it. You'd never make it.'

'I suppose not. See anything?'

`No.' He straightened. 'Not a damn thing.'

But quite suddenly I saw it. Perhaps because I was looking at the map from a range of four feet rather than a few inches. I said, 'Give me your pen, quickly!'

`What is it?'

`Hand me the book over there.'

Puzzled, he handed it to me. I used the book as a straight edge and drew a line from Moscow through Orel, Sumy and Kremenchug. Then another, connecting Gorlovka with Zaporozhye. Finally a third to join up Vinnitsa and Pervomaysk. When I'd done that, I went back to each line and extended it until all three lines met. The book's bulk prevented Elliot's seeing what I was doing until I'd finished. When I'd done, I laid the book aside and looked at him.

He was staring at the map in astonishment. After a moment he said, 'My God, it can't be that simple !'

The three lines made an arrowhead. They converged on a place close to the Black Sea. Elliot bent to look again and I saved him the trouble. 'Nikolayev,' I said. 'Does Nikolayev mean anything in your sweet young life?'

But there was no need to ask. He repeated the word slowly, with a kind of awe, staring at the atlas with wide eyes.