I
I HEAR YOU LOUD AND CLEAR
punctually at six o’clock the sun set with a last yellow flash behind the Blue
Mountains, a wave of violet shadow poured down Richmond Road, and the
crickets and tree frogs in the fine gardens began to zing and tinkle.
Apart from the background noise of the insects, the wide empty street was
quiet. The wealthy owners of the big, withdrawn houses-the bank managers,
company directors and top civil servants-had been home since five o’clock
and they would be discussing the day with their wives or taking a shower
and changing their clothes. In half an hour the street would come to life
again with the cocktail traffic, but now this very superior half mile of ’Rich
Road’, as it was known to the tradesmen of Kingston, held nothing but the
suspense of an empty stage and the heavy perfume of night-scented
jasmine.
Richmond Road is the ’best’ road in all Jamaica. It is Jamaica’s Park
Avenue, its Kensington Palace Gardens, its Avenue D’lena. The ’best’ people
live in its big old-fashioned houses, each in an acre or two of beautiful lawn
set, too trimly, with the finest trees and flowers from the Botanical Gardens
at Hope. The long, straight road is cool and quiet and withdrawn from the
hot, vulgar sprawl of Kingston where its residents earn their money, and, on
the other side of the T-inter-section at its top, lie the grounds of King’s
House, where the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Jamaica lives with
his family. In Jamaica, no road could have a finer ending.
On the eastern corner of the top intersection stands No 1 Richmond Road, a
substantial two-storey house with broad white-painted verandas running
round both floors. From the road a gravel path leads up to the pillared
entrance through wide lawns marked out with tennis courts on which this
evening, as on all evenings, the sprinklers are at work. This mansion is the
social Mecca of Kingston. It is Queen’s Club, which, for fifty years, has
boasted the power and frequency of its blackballs.
Such stubborn retreats will not long survive in modern Jamaica. One day
Queen’s Club will have its windows smashed and perhaps be burned to the
ground, but for the time being it is a useful place to find in a sub-tropical
island-well run, well staffed and with the finest cuisine and cellar in the
Caribbean. At that-time of day, on most evenings of the year, you would
find the same four motor cars standing in the road outside the club. They
were the cars belonging to the high bridge game that assembled punctually
at five and played until around midnight. You could almost set your watch
by these cars. They belonged, reading from the order in which they now
stood against the kerb, to the Brigadier in command of the Caribbean
Defence Force, to Kingston’s leading criminal lawyer, and to the
Mathematics Professor from Kingston University. At the tail of the line*
stood the black Sunbeam Alpine of Commander John Strangways, RN
(Ret.), Regional Control Officer for the Caribbean-or, less discreetly, the
local representative of the British Secret Service.
Just before six-fifteen, the silence of Richmond Road was softly broken.
Three blind beggars came round the corner of the intersection and moved
slowly down the pavement towards the four cars. They were Chigroes-
Chinese Negroes-bulky men, but bowed as they shuffled along, tapping at
the kerb with their white sticks. They walked in file. The first man, who
wore blue glasses and could presumably see better than the others, walked
in front holding a tin cup against the crook of the stick in his left hand. The
right hand of the second man rested on his shoulder and the right hand of
the third on the shoulder of the second. The eyes of the second and third
men were shut. The three men were dressed in rags and wore dirty jippajappa
baseball caps with long peaks. They said nothing and no noise came
from them except the soft tapping of their sticks as they came slowly down
the shadowed pavement towards the group of cars.
The three blind men would not have been incongruous in Kingston, where
there are many diseased people on the streets, but, in this quiet rich empty
street, they made an unpleasant impression. And it was odd that they should
all be Chinese Negroes. This is not a common mixture of bloods.
In the cardroom, the sunburned hand reached out into the green pool of the
centre table and gathered up the four cards. There was a quiet snap as the
trick went to join the rest.
”Hundred honours,” said Strangways, ”and ninety below!” He looked at his
watch and stood up. ”Back in twenty minutes. Your deal, Bill. Order some
drinks. Usual for me. Don’t bother to cook a hand for me while I’m gone. I
always spot them.”
Bill Templar, the Brigadier, laughed shortly. He pinged the bell by his side
and raked the cards in towards him. He said, ”Hurry up, blast you. You
always let the cards go cold just as your partner’s in the money.”
Strangways was already out of the door. The three men sat back resignedly
in their chairs. The coloured steward came in and they ordered drinks for
themselves and a whisky and water for Strangways.
There was this maddening interruption every evening at six-fifteen, about
halfway through their second rubber. At this time precisely, even if they
were in the middle of a hand, Strangways had to go to his ’office’ and ’make
a call’. It was a damned nuisance. But Strangways was a vital part of their
four and they put up with it. It was never explained what ’the call’ was, and
no one asked. Strangways’s job was ’hush’ and that was that. He was rarely
away for more than twenty minutes and it was understood that he paid for
his absence with a round of drinks.
The drinks came and the three men began to talk racing.
In fact, this was the most important moment in Strangways’s day-the time of
his duty radio contact with the powerful transmitter on the roof of the
building in Regent’s Park that is the headquarters of the Secret Service.
Every day, at eighteen-thirty local time, unless he gave’ warning the day
before that he would not be on the air-when he had business on one of the
other islands in his territory, for instance, or was seriously ill-he would
transmit his daily report and receive his orders. If he failed to come on the
air precisely at six-thirty, there would be a second call, the ’Blue’ call, at
seven, and, finally, the ’Red’ call at seven-thirty. After this, if his transmitter
remained silent, it was ’Emergency’, and Section III, his controlling
authority in London, would urgently get on the job of finding out what had
happened to him.
Even a ’Blue’ call means a bad mark for an agent unless his ’Reasons in
Writing’ are unanswerable. London’s radio schedules round the world are
desperately tight and their minute disruption by even one extra call is a
dangerous nuisance. Strangways had never suffered the ignominy of a ’Blue’
call, let alone a ’Red’, and was as certain as could be that he never would do
so. Every evening, at precisely six-fifteen, he left Queen’s Club, got into his
car and drove for ten minutes up into the foothills of the Blue Mountains to
his neat bungalow with the fabulous view over Kingston harbour. At six
twenty-five he walked through the hall to the office at the back. He
unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. Miss Trueblood, who
passed as his secretary, but was in fact his No. 2 and a former Chief Officer
WRNS, would already be sitting in front of the dials inside the dummy
filing cabinet. She would have the earphones on and would be making first
contact, tapping out his call-sign, WXN, on 14 megacycles. There would be
a shorthand pad on her elegant knees. Strangways would drop into the chair
beside her and pick up the other pair of headphones and, at exactly six
twenty-eight, he would take over from her and wait for the sudden
hollowness in the ether that meant that WWW in London was coming in to
acknowledge.
It was an iron routine. Strangways was a man of iron routine. Unfortunately,
strict patterns of behaviour can be deadly if they are read by an enemy.
Strangways, a tall lean man with a black patch over the right eye and the
sort of aquiline good looks you associate with the bridge of a destroyer,
walked quickly across the mahogany panelled hallway of Queen’s Club and
pushed through the light mosquito-wired doors and ran down the three steps
to the path.
There was nothing very much on his mind except the sensual pleasure of
the clean fresh evening air and the memory of the finesse that had given
him his three spades. There was this case, of course, the case he was
working on, a curious and complicated affair that M had rather nonchalantly
tossed over the air at him two weeks earlier. But it was going well. A
chance lead into the Chinese community had paid off. Some-odd angles had
come to light-for the present the merest shadows of angles-but if they jelled,
thought Strangways as. he strode down the gravel path and into Richmond
Road, he might find himself involved in something very odd indeed.
Strangways shrugged his shoulders. Of course it wouldn’t turn out like that.
The fantastic never materialized in his line of business. There would be
some drab solution that had been embroidered by overheated imaginations
and the usual hysteria of the Chinese.
Automatically, another part of Strangways’s mind took in the three blind
men. They were tapping slowly towards him down the sidewalk. They were
about twenty yards away. He calculated that they would pass him a second
or two before he reached his car. Out of shame for his own health and
gratitude for it, Strangways felt for a coin. He ran his thumbnail down its
edge to make sure it was a florin and not a penny. He took it out. He was
parallel with the beggars. How odd, they were all Chigroes! How very odd!
Strangways’s hand went out. The coin clanged in the tin cup.
”Bless you, Master,” said the leading man. ”Bless you,” echoed the other
two.
The car key was in Strangways’s hand. Vaguely he registered the moment of
silence as the tapping of the white sticks ceased. It was too late.
As Strangways had passed the last man, all three had swivelled. The back
two had fanned out a step to have a clear field of fire. Three revolvers,
ungainly with their sausage-shaped silencers, whipped out of holsters
concealed among the rags. With disciplined precision the three men aimed
at different points down Strangways’s spine-one between the shoulders, one
in the small of the back, one at the pelvis.
The three heavy coughs were almost one. Strangways’s body was hurled
forward as if it had been kicked. It lay absolutely still in the small puff of
dust from the sidewalk.
It was six-seventeen. With a squeal of tyres, a dingy motor hearse with
black plumes flying from the four corners of its roof took the T-intersection
into Richmond Road and shot down towards the group on the pavement.
The three men had just had time to pick up Strangways’s body when the
hearse slid to a stop abreast of them. The double doors at the back were
open. So was the plain deal coffin inside. The three men manhandled the
body through the doors and into the coffin. They climbed in. The lid was
put on and the doors pulled shut. The three Negroes sat down on three of
the four little seats at the corners of the coffin and unhurriedly laid their
white sticks beside them. Roomy black alpaca coats hung over the backs of
the seats. They put the coats on over their rags. Then they took off their
baseball caps and reached down to the floor and picked up black top hats
and put them on their heads.
The driver, who also was a Chinese Negro, looked nervously over his
shoulder.
”Go, man. Go!” said the biggest of the killers. He glanced down at the
luminous dial of his wrist watch. It said six-twenty. Just three minutes for
the job. Dead on time.
The hearse made a decorous U-turn and moved at a sedate speed up to the
intersection. There it turned right and at thirty miles an hour it cruised
genteelry up the tarmac highway towards the hills, its black plumes
streaming the doleful signal of its burden and the three mourners sitting bolt
upright with their arms crossed respectfully over their hearts.
’WXN calling WWW… WXN calling WWW…
WXN… WXN… WXN…’
The centre finger of Mary Trueblood’s right hand stabbed softly, elegantly,
at the key. She lifted her left wrist. Six twenty-eight. He was a minute late.
Mary Trueblood smiled at the thought of the little open Sunbeam tearing up
the road towards her. Now, in a second, she would hear the quick step, then
the key in the lock and he would be sitting beside her. There would be the
apologetic smile as he reached for the earphones. ”Sorry, Mary. Damned car
wouldn’t start.” Or, ”You’d think the blasted police knew my number by
now. Stopped me at Halfway Tree.” Mary Trueblood took the second pair of
earphones off their hook and put them on his chair to save him half a
second.
’… WXN calling WWW____WXN calling WWW____’
She tuned the dial a hair’s breadth and tried again. Her watch said sixtwenty-
nine. She began to worry. In a matter of seconds, London would be
coming in. Suddenly she thought, God, what could she do if Strangways
wasn’t on time! It was useless for her to acknowledge London and pretend
she was him-useless and dangerous. Radio Security would be monitoring
the call, as they monitored every call from an agent. Those instruments
which measured the minute peculiarities in an operator’s ’fist’ would at once
detect it wasn’t Strangways at the key. Mary Trueblood had been shown the
forest of dials in the quiet room on the top floor at headquarters, had
watched as the dancing hands registered the weight of each pulse, the speed
of each cipher group, the stumble over a particular letter. The Controller
had explained it all to her when she had joined the Caribbean station five
years before-how a buzzer would sound and the contact be automatically
broken if the wrong operator had come on the air. It was the basic
protection against a Secret Service’transmitter falling into enemy hands.
And, if an agent had been captured and was being forced to contact London
under torture, he had only to add a few hairbreadth peculiarities to his usual
’fist’ and they would tell the story of his capture as clearly as if he had
announced it en clair.
Now it had come! Now she was hearing the hollowness in the ether that
meant London was coming in. Mary Trueblood glanced at her watch. Sixthirty.
Panic! But now, at last, there were the footsteps in the hall. Thank
God! In a second he would come in. She must protect him! Desperately she
decided to take a chance and keep the circuit open.
’WWW calling WXN____WWW calling WXN____Can
you hear me?… can you hear me?’ London was coming over strong,
searching for the Jamaica station.
The footsteps were at the door.
Coolly, confidently, she tapped back: ’Hear you loud and clear… Hear you
loud and clear… Hear you…”
Behind her there was an explosion. Something hit her on the ankle. She
looked down. It was the lock of the door.
Mary Trueblood swivelled sharply on her chair. A man stood in the
doorway. It wasn’t Strangways. It was a big Negro with yellowish skin and
slanting eyes. There was a gun in his hand. It ended in a thick black
cylinder.
Mary Trueblood opened her mouth to scream.
The man smiled broadly. Slowly, lovingly, he lifted the gun and shot her
three times in and around the left breast.
The girl slumped sideways off her chair. The earphones slipped off her
golden hair on to the floor. For perhaps a second the tiny chirrup of London
sounded out into the room. Then it stopped. The buzzer at the Controller’s
desk in Radio Security had signalled that something was wrong on WXN.
The killer walked out of the door. He. came back carrying a box with a
coloured label on it that said PRESTO FIRE, and a big sugar sack marked
TATE & LYLE. He put the box down on the floor and went to the
body and roughly forced the sack over the head and down to the ankles. The
feet stuck out. He bent them and crammed them in. He dragged the bulky
sack out into the hall and came back. In the corner of the room the safe
stood open, as he had been told it would, and the cipher books had been
taken out and laid on the desk ready for work on the London signals. The
man threw these and all the papers in the safe into the centre of the room.
He tore down the curtains and added them to the pile. He topped it up with
a couple of chairs. He opened the box of Presto firelighters and took out a
handful and tucked them into the pile and lit them. Then he went out into
the hall and lit similar bonfires in appropriate places. The tinder-dry
furniture caught quickly and the flames began to lick up the panelling. .The
man went to the front door and opened it. Through the hibiscus hedge he
could see the glint of the hearse. There was no noise except the zing of
crickets and the soft tick-over of the car’s engine. Up and down the road
there was no other sign of life. The man went back into the smoke-filled
hall and easily shouldered the sack and came out again, leaving the door
open to make a draught. He walked swiftly down the path to the road. The
back doors of the hearse were open. He handed in the sack and watched the
two men force it into the coffin on top of Strangways’s body. Then he
climbed in and shut the doors and sat down and put on his top hat. .
As the first flames showed in the upper windows of the bungalow, the
hearse moved quietly from the sidewalk and went on its way up towards the
Mona Reservoir. There the weighted coffin would slip down into its fiftyfathom
grave and, in just forty-five minutes, the personnel and records of
the Caribbean station of the Secret Service would have been utterly
destroyed.