Year Of The Tiger

LONDON 1962
3

Chavasse stood in the entrance of the Caravel Club on Great Portland Street and looked gloomily out into the driving rain. He had conducted a wary love affair with London for several years, but four o’clock on a wet November morning was enough to strain any relationship, he told himself as he stepped out onto the pavement.

There was a nasty taste in his mouth from too many cigarettes, and the thought of the 115 pounds which had passed across the green baize tables of the Caravel didn’t help matters.

He’d been hanging around town for too long, that was the trouble. It was now over two months since he’d returned from his vacation after the Caspar Schultz affair, and the Chief had kept him sitting behind a desk at headquarters dealing with paperwork that any reasonably competent general-grade clerk could have handled.

He was still considering the situation and wondering what to do about it when he turned the corner onto Baker Street, looked up casually and noticed the light in his apartment.

He crossed the street quickly and went through the swing doors. The foyer was deserted and the night porter wasn’t behind his desk. Chavasse stood there thinking about it for a moment, a slight frown on his face. He finally decided against using the lift and went up the stairs quickly to the third floor.

The corridor was wrapped in quiet. He paused outside the door to his apartment for a moment, listening, and then moved round the corner to the service entrance and took out his key. The plump woman who sat on the edge of the kitchen table reading a magazine as she waited for the coffeepot to boil was attractive in spite of her dark, rather severe spectacles.

Chavasse closed the door gently, tiptoed across the room and kissed her on the nape of the neck. “I must say this is a funny time to call, but I’m more than willing,” he said with a grin.

Jean Frazer, the Chief’s secretary, turned and looked at him calmly. “Don’t flatter yourself, and where the hell have you been? I’ve had scouts out all over Soho and the West End since eight o’clock last night.”

A cold finger of excitement moved inside him. “Something big turned up.”

She nodded. “You’re telling me. You’d better go in. The Chief’s been here since midnight hoping you’d turn up.”

“How about some coffee?”

“I’ll bring it in when it’s ready.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?”

“What a hell of a wife you’d make, sweetheart,” he told her with a tired grin, and went through into the living room.

Two men were sitting in wing-backed chairs by the fire, a chessboard on the coffee table between them. One was a stranger to Chavasse, an old white-haired man in his seventies who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and studied the chessboard intently.

The other, at first sight, might have been any high Civil Service official. The well-cut, dark grey suit, the old Etonian tie, even the greying hair, all seemed a part of the familiar brand image.

It was only when he turned his head sharply and looked up that the difference became apparent. This was the face of no ordinary man. Here was a supremely intelligent being, with the cold grey eyes of a man who would be, above all things, a realist.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” Chavasse said as he peeled off his wet trench coat.

The Chief smiled faintly. “That’s putting it mildly. You must have found somewhere new.”

Chavasse nodded. “The Caravel Club in Great Portland Street. They do a nice steak and there’s a gaming room, chemmy and roulette mostly.”

“Is it worth a visit?”

“Not really,” Chavasse grinned. “Rather boring and too damned expensive. It’s time I saw a little action of another kind.”

“I think we can oblige you, Paul,” the Chief said. “I’d like you to meet Professor Craig, by the way.”

The old man shook hands and smiled. “So you’re the language expert? I’ve heard a lot about you, young man.”

“All to the good, I hope?” Chavasse took a cigarette from a box on the coffee table and pulled forward a chair.

“Professor Craig is chairman of the Joint Space Research Programme recently set up by NATO,” the Chief said. “He’s brought us rather an interesting problem. To be perfectly frank, I think you’re the only available Bureau agent capable of handling it.”

“Well, that’s certainly a flattering beginning,” Chavasse said. “What’s the story?”

The Chief carefully inserted a Turkish cigarette into an elegent silver holder. “When were you last in Tibet, Paul?”

Chavasse frowned. “You know that as well as I do. Three years ago, when we brought out the Dalai Lama.”

“How would you feel about going in again?”

Chavasse shrugged. “My Tibetan is still pretty fair. Not fluent, but good enough. It’s the other problems specific to the area which would worry me most. Mainly the fact that I’m a European, I suppose.”

“But I understood you to say you’d helped out the Dalai Lama three years ago,” Professor Craig said.

Chavasse nodded. “But that was different. Straight in and out again within a few days. I don’t know how long I could get by if I was there for any period of time. I don’t know if you’re aware of this fact, Professor, but not a single Allied soldier escaped from a Chinese prison camp during the Korean War, and for obvious reasons. Drop me into Russia in suitable clothes and I could pass without question. In a street in Peking, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

“Fair enough,” the Chief said. “I appreciate your point, but what if we could get round it?”

“That would still leave the Chinese,” Chavasse told him. “They’ve really tightened up since I was last there. Especially after the Tibetan revolt. Although mind you, I think their control of large areas must be pretty nominal.” He hesitated and then went on, “This thing – is it important?”

The Chief nodded gravely. “Probably the biggest I’ve ever asked you to handle.”

“You’d better tell me about it.”

The Chief leaned back in his chair. “What would you say was the gravest international problem at the moment – the Bomb?”

Chavasse shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not anymore, anyway. Probably the space race.”

The Chief nodded. “I agree, and the fact that John Glenn and those who have followed him have successfully emulated Gagarin and Titov has got our Russian friends worried. The gap is narrowing – and they know it.”

“Is there anything they can do about it?” Chavasse said.

The Chief nodded. “Indeed there is, and they’ve been working on it for too damned long already – but perhaps Professor Craig would like to tell you about it. He’s the expert.”

Professor Craig took off his spectacles and started to polish their lenses with the handkerchief from his breast pocket. “The great problem is propulsion, Mr. Chavasse. Bigger and better rockets just aren’t the answer, not when it comes to travelling to the moon, and anything farther involves immense distances.”

“And presumably the Russians have got something?” Chavasse said.

Craig shook his head. “Not yet, but I think they may be very near it. Since 1956, they’ve been experimenting with an ionic rocket drive using energy emitted by stars as the motive force.”

“It sounds rather like something out of a science-fiction story,” Chavasse said.

“I only wish it were, young man,” Professor Craig said gravely. “Unfortunately it’s hard fact, and if we don’t come up with another answer quickly we might as well throw in the towel.”

“And presumably, there is another answer?” Chavasse said softly.

The professor adjusted his spectacles carefully and nodded. “In normal circumstances, I would have said no, but in view of certain information which has recently come into my hands, it would appear that there is still a chance for us.”

The Chief leaned forward. “Ten days ago, a young Tibetan nobleman arrived in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. Ferguson, our local man, took him in charge. Besides possessing valuable information about the state of things in western Tibet at the present time, he was also carrying a letter for Professor Craig. It was from Karl Hoffner.”

Chavasse frowned. “I’ve heard of him vaguely. Wasn’t he some kind of medical missionary in Tibet for years?”

The Chief nodded. “A very wonderful man whom most people have completely forgotten. Remarkably similar career to Albert Schweitzer. Doctor, musician, philosopher, mathematician. He’s given forty years of his life to Tibet.”

“And he’s still alive?” Chavasse said.

The Chief nodded. “Living in a small town called Changu about one hundred and fifty miles across the border from Kashmir. Under house arrest, as far as we can make out.”

“This letter,” Chavasse said, turning to Professor Craig. “Why was it addressed to you?”

“Karl Hoffner and I were fellow students and research workers for years.” Craig sighed heavily. “One of the great minds of the century, Mr. Chavasse. He could have had all the fame of an Einstein, but he chose to bury himself in a forgotten country.”

“But what was in the letter that was so interesting?” Chavasse asked.

“On the face of it, nothing very much. It was simply a letter from one old friend to another. He’d apparently heard that this young Tibetan was making a break for it and decided to take the opportunity of writing to me, probably for the last time. He’s in poor health.”

“How are they treating him?”

“Apparently quite well.” Craig shrugged. “He was always greatly loved by the people. Probably the Communists are using him as a sort of symbol. He said in his letter that he had been confined to his house for more than a year and to help pass the time had returned to his greatest love, mathematics.”

“Presumably this is important?”

“Karl Hoffner is probably one of the great mathematicians of all time,” Professor Craig said solemnly. “Do you mind if I get a little technical?”

“By all means,” Chavasse told him.

“I don’t know the extent of your knowledge of mathematical concepts,” Craig said, “but you are perhaps aware that Einstein demonstrated that matter is nothing but energy fixed in a rigid pattern?”

“E equals mc squared.” Chavasse grinned. “I’m with you so far.”

“In a celebrated thesis written for his doctorate while a young man,” Craig went on, “Karl Hoffner demonstrated that energy itself is space locked up in a certain pattern. His proof involved an audacious development of non-Euclidean geometry which was as revolutionary as Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

“Now, you’ve completely lost me,” Chavasse said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Craig smiled. “Probably only six brains on earth were capable of understanding his theory at the time, such was its complexity. It aroused considerable interest in academic circles and was then virtually forgotten. It was only theoretical, you see. It led nowhere and had no conceivable practical application.”

“And now he’s taken it one stage further,” Chavasse said. “Is that what you’re leading up to?”

Craig nodded. “He mentioned in his letter, quite casually I might add, that he had reached the solution to the problem. He has proved that space can be twisted, manipulated if you like, until it becomes an energy field.”

“And this is really important?” Chavasse said.

“Important?” The professor sighed. “For one thing, it relegates nuclear physics to roughly the Eocene Age of science. For another, it gives us an entirely new concept of space travel. We could produce an energy drive for our rockets from space itself, something that would be infinitely superior to the Russian concept of the ionic drive.”

“Do you think Hoffner has any idea of the important of his discovery?” Chavasse said.

Craig shook his head. “Given his circumstances, I don’t think he is even aware that orbital flights have taken place. If he knew that man had already crossed the space threshold, the value of his discovery would be at once obvious to him.”

“It’s incredible,” Chavasse said. “Quite incredible.”

“What’s even more to the point is that knowing this does us no damn good at all as long as the know-how remains locked in the brain of a sick old man under house arrest in a Communist-dominated country,” the Chief said. “We’ve got to get him out, Paul.”

Chavasse sighed. “Well, I was begging for action,” he said, “and now I’ve got it, though how the hell I’m supposed to pull it off, I don’t know.”

“I’ve already given that quite some thought.” The Chief pushed the chessboard out of the way and unfolded a large map.

“Now this is the area involved – Kashmir and western Tibet. Changu is about a hundred and fifty miles from the border. You’ll notice that some fifty miles into Tibet, there’s a village called Rudok. In his despatch the other day, Ferguson had already informed me that, according to the young Tibetan nobleman who brought out the letter, the Chinese have little control of the area. He says the monastery outside Rudok is quite a centre of resistance. If we could get you there, you’d at least have a base. Of course, from then on, you’d have to play it by ear.”

“Two obvious points,” Chavasse said. “How do I get in and how do I get the locals to accept me if I do?”

“That’s all arranged,” the Chief said. “Since yesterday evening when Professor Craig first came to me to point out that there was more in the letter than met the eye, I’ve used the special line to speak to Ferguson in Srinagar no fewer than four times. He’s arranged for this young Tibetan to go in with you.”

“And what about transportation?”

“We’ll fly you in.”

Chavasse frowned. “Are you sure it’s possible from Kashmir? The Ladakh range is a hell of a height.”

“Ferguson’s dug up a bush pilot named Jan Kerensky. He’s a Pole – flew for the R.A.F. during the war. He’s doing government work in the area, aerial reconnaissance and so forth. Apparently, there’s an old R.A.F. emergency airstrip outside Leh which he sometimes uses. That’s only eighty or ninety miles from the Tibetan border. We’ve offered him five thousand to fly you in and land you at this monastery near Rudok and another five to pick you up again exactly one week later.”

“Does he think he can do it?”

The Chief nodded. “He says it’s possible, no more than that. You’re obviously going to need a hell of a lot of luck.”

“You can say that again,” Chavasse told him. “When do I go?”

“There’s a Vulcan bomber leaving R.A.F. Edgeworth at nine for Singapore. It’ll drop you off at Aden. You can fly on to Kashmir from there.”

The Chief got to his feet and said briskly, “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do here, Professor. I’ll take you home. You look as if you could do with some sleep.”

As Craig started to get up, Chavasse said quickly, “Just a moment, Professor, if you don’t mind.” Craig sat down again and Chavasse went on, “There’s always the question of how I’m to identify myself to Doctor Hoffner. I’ve got to make him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m absolutely genuine. Can you suggest anything?”

Craig stared into space for a moment, a slight frown on his face, and then, quite suddenly, he smiled. “There is something in Karl Koffner’s past which only he and I know,” he said. “We were in love with the same girl. There was a certain May evening at his rooms in Cambridge when we decided to settle the matter once and for all. She was sitting in the garden and on the toss of a coin, Karl went out to her first. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he returned. Later, as I stood in the garden with her after she’d promised to become my wife, he sat in the darkness inside and played the Moonlight Sonata. He was a superb pianist.”

“Thank you, sir,” Chavasse said gently.

“A long, long time ago, young man, but he’ll remember every detail of that night. I know I do.” Craig stood up and held out his hand. “I can only wish you luck, Mr. Chavasse. I hope to see you again, very soon.”

As Craig picked up his coat, the Chief turned to Chavasse briskly and smiled. “Well, Paul, it’s going to be a tough one, but just remember how important this is to all of us. Jean’s going to stay and cook you a meal and so on. She’ll drive you to Edgeworth and see you off. Sorry I can’t come myself, but I’ve an important conference at the Foreign Office at nine-thirty.”

“That’s all right, sir,” Chavasse said.

The Chief ushered Craig to the door, opened it and turned. He seemed to be about to say something else and then thought better of it and closed the door gently behind him.

Chavasse stood in the middle of the room for a long moment after they had gone, and then he lit a cigarette and went back into the kitchen.

Jean Frazer was making a bacon and egg fry.

She turned and wrinkled her nose. “Better have a shower. You look awful.”

“So would you if you’d been handed a job like this,” he said. “What’s happened to the coffee, anyway?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you.” She hesitated and came towards him, smoothing her palms nervously along her thighs. “It’s not so good, is it, Paul?”

“It shines,” he said. “Putting it mildly.” He grinned crookedly. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever got mixed up in this crazy business.”

Suddenly, she seemed close to tears. He bent down quickly and kissed her on the mouth. “Give me ten minutes to shower and change and I’ll have breakfast with you. Afterwards, you can drive me to my doom.”

She turned away quickly and he went back into the living room and started to take off his tie. He opened the window and stood there for a moment, breathing in the raw freshness of the rain, and suddenly he felt exhilarated – tremendously exhilarated. It was the first time in two months that he had felt really alive. When he went into the bathroom, he was whistling.