The Harry Palmer Quartet

I groaned, ‘No time now, I’m afraid.’ I just didn’t want any more of Carswell for a long time, but I just couldn’t raise the energy to transfer him. In any case, lose him, we’d lose Murray, and I wanted to hang on to the only muscular intelligent adult male we had.

Carswell came nearer and dusted off the old velvet cushion. ‘How’s things?’ I asked. I capitulated.

He lowered his creaking bones into my wicker chair.

‘Very fit, very fit indeed. Plenty of exercise and fresh air, that’s the secret – if you don’t mind me saying so, you could do with a little of the same. Overdoing it a bit, old chap. Can see it; dark here!’ He ran a finger under his large red staring eyes.

The door opened noiselessly and Alice came in to collect Jean’s file. I was getting used to having my own department. My history books, notes and unpaid bills were scattered through our only light clean office in such profusion that I had almost forgotten the rigorous tidiness it had enjoyed when it was Dalby’s domain. Alice hadn’t, however, and was constantly straightening files and hiding things in places where ‘Mr Dalby keeps them’. I found the crossword puzzle I had been working on. Alice had completed it. I had got ten down correct. It was EAT. ‘Not so funny, rheumatism,’ Carswell was saying. DITHYRAMBE had been quite wrong. I don’t know why I’d ever thought it otherwise … ‘With white horse oils,’ Carswell was saying, ‘and go straight to bed.’

I wished Carswell would stop talking and go home. He smoked his cigarette with a nervous concentration taking it compulsively out of his mouth, but never more than three inches away. Alice watched Carswell as he scratched his shoulder blades upon the carved uprights of the guest chair. She knew, as I did, that he was settling in. She gave me the rolling eyes and screwed face of sympathy. I pretended I hadn’t seen the completed puzzle.

At that moment Chico was pressing button A.

My outside phone rang. And everyone began talking.

‘Where are you speaking from? Yes, where are you now? What the hell are you doing in Grantham?’

‘Let me talk to him, sir. There are the film requisitions, he hasn’t done anything about them and they must go off today.’

‘Well, you’ve no business in Grantham. Who signed your travel form? Oh, did you? Well, you needn’t think you’re charging it on expenses.’

‘Murray,’ Carswell was going on relentlessly. ‘A dashed good trooper, mind you, without your confidence, nothing. I appreciate it. Working very closely, restraining the impulse to guess hastily. Thoroughness is the essence of a statistical operation.’

‘Just what do you think my role is in this drama of your life?’

‘Yes, sir, I know, sir, the commanding officer, sir, but when I saw …’

‘Right, Chico, that’s right, you’ve got it right for once. That’s what I am, the, and more immediately, your commanding officer. But that doesn’t worry you, does it? Would you have just minced off into the blue if Dalby had still been in charge here – would you?’

‘I’ve seen Dalby, sir, spoken with him. I’m seeing him again this evening.’

Carswell spread some sheets of paper across my desk. He said, ‘These figures I’ve brought along here are only the briefest possible extract, I don’t want to worry you with the nuts and bolts. What you want is results, not excuses, as you are always saying. There’s a lot more work if they are to be made convincing. I mean really convincing. At this stage it’s more of an analytical hunch.’

‘You have no business seeing Dalby.’

‘It’s wrong to say commanding officer on a clear line, sir.’

‘You stay out of this, Alice.’

‘An analytical hunch, but nevertheless, a hunch.’

‘You have no business going above my head. It’s a most despicable thing and it’s damned unmilitary.’

‘You shouldn’t say unmilitary – that’s a clear line. He’s on just an ordinary GPO line.’

Carswell was still talking. ‘Reading the results, old boy, is where the skill comes in, I always say. Just needs a trained mind. I know you thought some of our whims a little odd at times. Oh, I know. No, no, no, you see, you are a man of action. Pater just the same, the same exactly.’

‘I recognized this fellow, sir. In the film at the War House, sir. A friend, sir, of my cousin, and frightfully good at chemistry. It really is, sir. I’ll see Dalby again tonight. He thinks I should have a few days here, sir. Dalby said to tell no one but I knew you’d wonder where I was, and there is the film requisition too, sir. I haven’t done them for a few days.’

Carswell was folding his sheet of statistics and replacing it in the large laced file. ‘Murray will do all the action stuff, phoning and carrying on. But I want your OK to say he’s from the Special Branch Metropolitan Police. I wanted to see you last week, but Murray said without a few figures to start on we had just no case at all. We’ll have to check hospitals, nursing homes, convalescent homes – nut-houses too, old boy, I said, if they are scientists. Ha ha. But it is convincing, I want to stress that.’

Nut-houses, I thought, whatever would Carswell be on about next. Meanwhile Chico was saying, ‘Shall I phone you back tomorrow after I’ve spoken to Dalby, sir?’

‘Jean is here, sir,’ said Alice, trying to hide Jean’s confidential file under her mauve cardigan with the blue buttons.

‘Hello, my dear young lady.’

‘No, don’t ring off, I haven’t finished with you yet!’

‘I had a lot of trouble, Alice. They said it wouldn’t be ready till morning.’

‘Have my seat, it’s not awfully comfortable.’

‘They distinctly said four-thirty. It’s always the same. The more time one gives them the more unreliable they are.’

‘This friend of my cousin, sir, top ranker with the Chemical Warfare people. I knew if I spoke to him.’

‘No, I’ve been sitting down all day.’

‘How did you come to see Dalby?’

‘Dalby came in after the ad in the Stage.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me, Alice?’

‘I’d rather stand really.’

‘No, I was talking to Alice. How did you see Dalby?’

‘Can’t I tell Murray to go ahead then, sir, acting most discreetly, of course. Mustn’t upset the guardians of the law.’

‘Did they say what time in the morning, Jean?’

‘Just by accident. Horrid little place. It’s where he usually meets you.’

‘I’ve never been to Grantham in my life, not to get out of the train, anyway.’

‘It cheers me up, my dear. When you get old, the sun warms your bones.’

‘Remind him about the reqs, sir. He’s the only one that understands them.’

‘No, there’s a chair there if I want one, really, umm.’

‘Distinctly: where he usually meets you. That’s what he said.’

‘I’ll go through all the results with you, if you like. You’ll be impressed, I know. Cracked it wide open.’

‘No, sober as a judge.’

‘Shall I hang on, sir? It’s almost five-thirty.’

‘Me, sir. No, sir. You know I almost never tipple, sir.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I like you, Chico. Phone in this time tomorrow. I’ll be finished doing your damned requisition by then if I start now.’

The reputation of the department needed another crack-pot scheme from Carswell like it needed more film requisitions. But my little phone conversation with Chico left me too weak to argue. I gave him the OK in the hope that Murray was intelligent enough to keep him out of harm’s way. He shuffled out with his big brown file of statistics. That was Wednesday. I finished the reqs by ten-thirty, had a drink at the Fitzroy and then went back to the office to phone for a car. We had a lot of taxis in the car pool. They were the least noticeable car and the blue glass was great for observation. As I crossed the road there was one of our cabs there already. It seemed unbelievable that Jean or Alice had predicted to a few minutes how long the reqs would take. I looked in the cab but it was empty. As I got to the top floor I saw the light was on under the door of my office. I hadn’t left it on. I moved near. Inside there was someone moving the paper work about on my desk. I could hear two voices having a row in the street below. Near to my head the office clock was ticking gently. I reached for the big metal ruler from Alice’s desk and found myself rubbing the scar tissue from my descent into the gaming room. I turned the brass door handle as silently and as slowly as I could. Then I kicked the door and dropped in the doorway on my knees, the steel ruler poised behind my head.

Dalby said, ‘Hello,’ and poured me a drink.

Dalby’s clothes were tweedy and shabby. Silhouetted grey in the red neon-lit sky were Jean’s big armful of daisies. Dalby sat heavily at the desk on which the Anglepoise light splashed across the large piles of non-secret office work that I never seemed to complete. The low place light emphasized his dark deep-set eyes, and his quick nervous movements belied his slow reactions. I realized that he hadn’t out-thought me when I rocketed in the door. He just hadn’t begun to react.

There seemed so much I wanted to ask him. I wondered whether I’d have to go right back to Ross with my cap in my hand and tell him that we’d be very happy to have the Gumhuria stuff. He poured me a large Teacher’s whisky and by now I needed it – I had the shivers. I held the glass in both hands and sipped it gratefully. Dalby’s eyes came slowly back into focus on his surroundings as from a long, long journey. We looked at each other for perhaps two minutes, then he spoke in that careful deep voice of his, ‘Did you ever see a bomb explode?’ he asked. I wanted him to explain things to me and here he was adding to the confusion by asking me questions. I shook my head.

‘You’re going to now,’ he said. ‘The Minister has particularly asked for us to be at the next American test. The American Defense Department say they’ve got a way to jam seismographs; they are going to try to double the Russian readings. I told him that we had a file on some of the British scientists who are there.’

‘Some of them,’ I said. ‘If we are prepared to think that Carswell has got anything on the ball at all, then we’ve got a file of eighteen out of a British total of fifty, that total including eleven lab assistants.’

‘Yes,’ Dalby came alive for a moment. ‘Alice told me about what you and Carswell have been up to. You can drop it and get Carswell and his sergeant out of this department; we are overcrowded now.’

A load of help Dalby was being; he stays away a couple of months, then when he does come back it’s unannounced in the middle of the night and all he does is criticize.

‘This bomb test, it’s Tuesday. I’ll be going along. You can bring an assistant if you want to.’

I wondered if he knew about Jean and if I’d still be entitled to an assistant if Dalby was back to take over.

‘Will you want Chico to go with us?’

‘Yes, get him on the phone. He can arrange the tickets and passes.’

‘It’s eleven-fifteen,’ I said. ‘Do you know where I can get him?’

‘Do I know? Who’s been in charge here the last few weeks? You’ve got his number, haven’t you? I haven’t seen him for weeks.’

‘He’s in Grantham,’ I said weakly.

‘Who sent him there and what for?’

I didn’t know why Dalby was playing close like this, but I decided to cover up. ‘We had a file to be moved and there was no courier with high enough clearance. He’ll be back in a day or so.’

‘Oh, leave him be. Alice can arrange things.’

I nodded but for the first time I began to suspect that something odd was going on; from now on I was keeping my head down.

The next morning I completed a little private task that took an hour of my time once every two months. I collected a heavy manilla envelope from an address near Leciester Square, inspected the contents and mailed it back to the address from which I’d got it.

18

[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) You will have a chance to follow new interests, but old friendships should not be forgotten. For those in love a thrilling development lies ahead.]

Tokwe Atoll was a handful of breakfast crumbs on a blue coverlet. Each island had its little green bays that resisted the blueness of the vast Pacific which struck the reefs in hammers of fury and shattered into a swirl of enveloping whiteness around wrecked craft sunk along the shore line since 1944. The open mouths of the tank landing craft gaped toothless at the barbed-wire-strewn beach. Here and there were bright red rusting tanks and tracked vehicles, broken, split and open to the timeless sky. As we came lower we could pick out painted ammunition boxes and broken crates. The huge Vertol helicopter that had lifted us from the aircraft carrier in which only an hour ago we had been enjoying icy orange-juice, cornflakes and waffles with maple syrup, swooped across the water on to the concrete of ‘Laboratory Field’, an air strip that didn’t exist ten weeks ago. As we dismounted, a jeep, painted white, sped towards us. The four air police inside wore shorts (shorts always look wrong on Americans), khaki shirts open at the neck, with white side-arms and cross-belt. On the right chest of the shirt they carried their names on leather strips.

‘Laboratory Field’, or ‘Lay Field’ as the Americans had rather perversely shortened it, comprised the whole of this island, which was one of the hundred that made up the whole atoll. In ninety days they had equipped the islands with an airfield, suitable for dealing with both piloted and non-piloted aircraft; two athletic fields, two movie theatres, a chapel, a clothing store, beach clubs for officers and enlisted men, a library, hobby shops, vast quarters for the Commanding General, a maintenance hangar, personnel landing pier, mess hall, dispensary, a PX, post office, a wonderful modern laundry and a power plant. At one time during the test we were told there were ninety baseball teams in ten organized leagues. The telephone exchange could handle more than 6,000 calls per day; one mess alone served 9,000 meals per day, and a radio station operated around the clock, and buses across the island did likewise. I wish that London could match it. Dalby, Jean and I wore plastic badges showing our photos and description. Across the badge a large letter ‘Q’ was printed. It granted us entry to even the secret laboratory areas.

We spent the first few hours looking around the project. An army major with an amazing memory for facts and figures went around with us. The bomb to be exploded was a ‘fractional crit bomb’, the major explained to us. ‘Uranium, when enough (that is a critical mass) of it comes together, explodes. But if the density is squeezed, the same explosion can come from a smaller quantity. So high explosive is placed round a small sphere of U-235, or plutonium. This means that only a fraction of the critical mass is needed, hence “fractional crit bomb”.’

The major looked at his audience like he expected applause and went on to explain about ways in which it had become possible to dispense with tritium and with refrigeration, so making the bomb cheaper and easier to produce. He left me back there with the ‘fractional crit’ stuff, but we let him go on.

We flew out to the island where the detonation was to take place. The whole island was a mass of instruments, and it coruscated in the bright tropical sunshine. The major pointed them out to us. He was a short thickset man with rimless glasses and a blue chin who looked like Humpty Dumpty in his white helmet liner with ‘Q’ painted on it, but then perhaps we all did. There were the photocells, photo-multipliers, ion chambers, mass and beta ray spectographs. Standing in the middle of this sandy arena, surrounded by machines, with dozens of human attendants, in godlike splendour, was the shot tower. A great red-painted metal tower 200 feet high. Round the base of the tower were huge notices reading ‘DANGER’ and under that, with not so typical American understatement, the words ‘High Explosives’.

The sun sets and goes out like a flash-light in the tropics and it was low in the sky as we clattered along the hardboard corridors of Main Block Three. It was the third conference of the day and the ice-water was slopping around inside me like the documents in an untidy brief-case – my briefcase for instance. We got there before the meeting had begun and everyone was standing around giving each other the old stuff about retreads, PTA meetings, and where to go for a good divorce. I could see many people I knew. From ONI; from State Dept Intelligence, and the many separate US Army Intelligence departments. Standing alone in the corner were three young crew-cut collegiate men from the FBI – pariahs of the US Intelligence Organization – and not without reason.

Against the shuttered light of the window I saw a couple of colonels I remembered from a stint with the CIA Bankrolls – thicker, hair thinner and belts longer. ‘Skip’ Henderson had made major, I noticed – one of the brightest Intelligence men I knew. His assistant, Lieutenant Barney Barnes, wasn’t with him today. I hoped he was around somewhere. Barney and Skip were people who listen a lot, tell you that you are a sensation, and at the end of a couple of hours you begin to think it’s true. Skip gave me the high sign. Dalby was well into a finger-stabbing duel with Colonel Donahue. Jean was sifting through her shorthand notes, and pencils to separate them from skin food, wych-hazel, eyebrow pencils and lipstick. Before I could edge round to Skip, the chairman, Battersby, the US Intelligence Department’s logistic king, made coughing noises. He felt he’d left enough time between the late arrivals – us – and starting the motors, to save us embarrassment. We sat down, all fourteen of us round the long mess-hall table; in front of each of us stood some white paper, a Zippi Speedball pen, a book of matches that said, ‘Pestpruf roofing’ followed by an address in Cincinnati, and a clean drinking-glass. In the centre of the table four plastic jugs held cold American water in vacuum-stoppered frigidity. We all waited for Battersby to kick off.

‘Well, we’ve all had a tough day, so we won’t … say – get one of those guys outside to fix these darn fans, will you?’

Someone slid across to the door and held a whispered conversation with the Air Policeman outside. We all tried to listen to both conversations at once. A white plastic helmet liner looked round the door. He wanted to make sure that a roomful of people without fans really existed. Battersby saw the movement.

‘Just get some fans on in here, son, will you?’ he boomed, then turned back to us. ‘Try to get a little agreement round here. Guess all you people know each other.’ This was a cue for all those healthy well-laundered Americans to politely display thirty-two teeth at Jean. I shifted uncomfortably in my drip-dry shirt that had become a bundle under my arm-pits.

The little information officer who had been showing us the set-up went to the blackboard and drew a circle; inside it he wrote ‘Uranium 235 (or Plutonium)’. He tapped the circle with his chalk. ‘Hit this with a Uranium 235 bullet and you get fission – a self-sustaining reaction.’ Over on the right-hand side of the board he wrote ‘July 16, 1945.’

‘Exactly the same principle gave us the “thin man” bomb. Hiroshima.’ The major wrote ‘August 6, 1945’ under the first date. ‘Now for the “fat boy”. That took out Nagasaki.’ He added August 9 to the list and drew another circle. ‘This,’ he made the circle very thick with the side of his chalk, ‘is made of plutonium with a hollow centre; you implode it. That is to say let it collapse on to itself like a burst balloon by having it surrounded with something that gives you a big bang forming,’ he wrote ‘crit mass’ in the centre of the thick circle. ‘A critical mass. OK?’ He wrote ‘August 28/29? 1949’ and turned to face us again. ‘We are not sure of the exact date.’ I’ll bet Ross could tell you, I thought, and I felt a little glow of vicarious pride.1 The major went on, ‘We think that is the sort of bomb the reds exploded in 1949. Now then we get to the Eniwetok blast.’ He wrote ‘November 1, 1952’ under the other dates.

He drew another circle on the board and wrote ‘deuterium’ inside it. ‘Also called heavy hydrogen,’ he said, tapping the word deuterium. Alongside the first circle he drew two more. Missing the centre circle he wrote the word tritium into the third circle. ‘Tritium is also called super-heavy hydrogen,’ he said, tapping it. ‘Now what happens in a hydrogen blast? These two fuse. It is a fusion bomb which creates a chain reaction between these two: heavy hydrogen and super-heavy hydrogen. It heats them by a trigger of what?’ He turned to write the answer into the centre circle. A colonel said, ‘Super-duper heavy hydrogen.’ Humpty Dumpty turned round and then laughed, but I wouldn’t have cared to be a captain that said it.

The major drew a chalkline connecting the earlier diagram with the centre circle. ‘The trigger is an atomic bomb. Making it a fission-fusion device. Now in the larger bomb we use a different substance. Uranium 235 is expensive, but Uranium 238 is cheaper but needs a lot more get-up-and-go to be triggered. You surround the trigger with a layer of 238,’ he drew a diagram. ‘But this tends to give a lot of fallout as well as a big energy release. Now you can see that all these bombs, including the red H-blast …’ he wrote ‘August 12, 1953’ on to the list … ‘These bombs all have a standard primitive A-bomb centre and are called fission-fusion-fission bombs. OK?’

The major was stabbing the air with his chalk like a medical student with his first thermometer. ‘Now we come to our little blast-off here at Tokwe. We have a standard 238 bomb, but here,’ he tapped the centre of the inevitable circle, ‘here we have a trigger of an entirely new pattern. The only purpose of the trigger is to get extreme temperatures. OK? Suppose in here we put a king-size shot of TNT and get enough temperature to flash the bomb. Right?’ He wrote ‘TNT’ into the centre of the chalk circle. ‘Then that would be what we call a “high explosive to fusion reaction”.’ He wrote ‘H.E.-fusion’ under that drawing. ‘We haven’t done that and nor has anyone else – in fact it’s probably impossible. Practically all the little countries have got their labs working on this because if they ever do it bombs will be a dime a dozen.’ He rubbed out ‘TNT’ and tapped the blank space. ‘So what do we have here? I’ll tell you. Not a thing.’ He paused while we were all registering appropriate types of surprise. ‘No, we have nothing inside the bomb, but we do have something here.’ He drew a small rectangle at the extreme edge of the board (he could draw any shape, this boy). Inside the rectangle he wrote ‘SVMF’. ‘Here there is the Super Volt Micro Flash mechanism, the SUVOM which for a millionth of a microsecond builds up enough voltage to trip the mechanism. Now as you see, this power is taken into the bomb,’ he drew a long squeaky chalkline joining the bomb to the mechanism, ‘by the umbilical cord. Without the A-bomb trigger there will be no fallout. This will be the first entirely clean bomb. OK?’

The major carefully picked himself a fresh piece of chalk and I sneaked a look at my watch. It was 6.10 P.M. ‘Size,’ he said. ‘What size bomb is this one we have here? This is a fifty-megaton bomb.2 In terms of the destructive area, this is a bomb that would take out a whole city and make the “thin man” look like a dud. We expect Type 2 destruction – that is to say everything flammable gone and severe damage to metal and brick across a thirty-five-mile radius.’ Someone at the other end of the table said, ‘Diameter,’ and Humpty Dumpty said, ‘No; radius!’ There was a low whistle. I guessed that the officer who said diameter had been asked to do so, but it was quite a statement just the same. The major pressed on. ‘In terms of territory it means that a bomb in Bernalillo brings Type 2 as far as Santa Fé and Los Lunas (these were towns in New Mexico near Los Alamos which almost everyone knew in terms of flesh, food, and furlough). There were more exclamations. ‘Or to take another example, from Sacramento right the way down to Redwood City, and that includes the Sheraton Palace.’ It was a private joke and someone laughed at it. The little major was quite enjoying his lecture now, what with everyone being awake and all. ‘For the sake of our guests, I’ll give you another demonstration that may help. Think of Type 2 from Southend to Reading.’ He pronounced it Reeding. He looked at me and I said, ‘If it’s all the same to you I’ll think of it from Santa Fé to Los Lunas.’