“No, he runs some company to do with mining. That’s his specialty, and this is mine. Now, watch.”
Half an hour later she rolled off him and asked, “Did you like that, darling?”
Shannon laughed, and she caught a flash of teeth in the darkness as he grinned.
“Oh yes,” he said softly. “I enjoyed that enormously. Tell me about your old man.”
“Daddy? Oh, he’s a boring old businessman. Spends all his day in a stuffy office in the City.”
“Some businessmen interest me. So tell me, what’s he like?”
Sir James Manson was enjoying his midmorning coffee in the sun lounge on the south side of his country mansion that Saturday morning when the call came through from Adrian Goole. The Foreign Office official was speaking from his own home in Kent.
“I hope you won’t mind my calling you over the weekend,” he said.
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” said Manson quite untruthfully. “Anytime.”
“I would have called at the office last night, but I got held up at a meeting. Recalling our conversation some time ago about the results of your mining survey down in that African place. You remember?”
Manson supposed Goole felt obliged to go through the security rigmarole on an open line.
“Yes indeed,” he said. “I took up your suggestion made at that dinner. The figures concerned were slightly changed so that the quantities revealed were quite unviable from a business standpoint. The report went off, was received, and I’ve heard no more about it.”
Goole’s next words jerked Sir James Manson out of his weekend relaxation.
“Actually, we have,” said the voice on the phone. “Nothing really disturbing, but odd all the same. Our Ambassador in the area, although accredited to that country and three other small republics, doesn’t live there, as you know. But he sends in regular reports, gleaned from a variety of sources, including normal liaison with other friendly diplomats. A copy of a section of his latest report, concerned with the economic side of things out there, landed on my desk yesterday at the office. It seems there’s a rumor out there that the Soviet government has secured permission to send in a mining survey team of their own. Of course, they may not be concerned with the same area as your chaps….”
Sir James Manson stared at the telephone as Goole’s voice twittered on. In his head a pulse began to hammer, close to his left temple.
“I was only thinking, Sir James, that if these Russian chaps go over the same area your man went over, their findings might be somewhat different. Fortunately, it’s only a question of minor quantities of tin. Still, I thought you ought to know. Hello? Hello? Are you there?”
Manson jerked himself out of his reverie. With a massive effort he made his voice appear normal.
“Yes indeed. Sorry. I was just thinking. Very good of you to call me, Goole. I don’t suppose they’ll be in the same area as my man. But damn useful to know, all the same.”
He went through the usual pleasantries before hanging up, and walked slowly back to the sun terrace, his mind racing. Coincidence? Could be, it just could be. If the Soviet survey team was going to cover an area miles away from the Crystal Mountain range, it would be purely a coincidence. On the other hand, if it went straight toward the Crystal Mountain without having done any aerial survey work to notice the differences in vegetation in that area, then that would be no coincidence. That would be bloody sabotage. And there was no way he could find out, no way of being absolutely certain, without betraying his own continuing interest. And that would be fatal.
He thought of Chalmers, the man he was convinced he had silenced with money. His teeth ground. Had he talked? Wittingly? Unwittingly? He had half a mind to let Endean take care of Dr. Chalmers, or one of Endean’s friends. But that would change nothing. And there was no proof of a security leak.
He could shelve his plans at once and think no more of them. He considered this, then considered again the pot of pure gold at the end of this particular rainbow. James Manson was not where he was because he had the habit of backing down on account of risk.
He sat down in his deck chair next to the now cold coffeepot and thought hard. He intended to go forward as planned, but he had to assume the Russian mining team would touch on the area Mulrooney had visited, and he had to assume it too would notice the vegetation changes. Therefore there was now a new element, a time limit. He did some mental calculation and came up with the figure of three months. If the Russians learned the content of the Crystal Mountain, there would be a “technical aid” team in there like a dose of salts. A big one at that, and half the members would be hard men from KGB.
Shannon’s shortest schedule had been a hundred days, but he had originally told Endean that another fortnight added to the timetable would make the whole project that much more feasible. Now they did not have that fortnight. In fact, if the Russians moved faster than usual, they might not even have a hundred days.
He returned to the telephone and called Simon Endean. His own weekend had been disturbed; there was no reason why Endean should not start doing a bit of work.
Endean called Shannon at the hotel on Monday morning and set up a rendezvous for two that afternoon at a small apartment house in St. John’s Wood. He had hired the flat on the instructions of Sir James Manson, after having had a long briefing at the country mansion on Sunday afternoon. He had taken the flat for a month in the name of Harris, paying cash and giving a fictitious reference, which no one checked. The reason for the hiring was simple: the flat had a telephone that did not go through a switchboard.
Shannon was there on time and found the man he still called Harris already installed. The telephone was hung in a desk microphone set that would enable a telephone conference to be held between one or more people in the room and the person on the other end of the line.
“The chief of the consortium has read your report,” he told Shannon, “and wants to have a word with you.”
At two-thirty the phone rang. Endean threw the “speak” switch on the machine, and Sir James Manson’s voice came on the line. Shannon already knew who it would be but gave no sign.
“Are you there, Mr. Shannon?” asked the voice.
“Yes, sir.”