Midnight Never Comes

'Didn't the Russian claim diplomatic immunity?'

Mallory nodded. 'M.I.6. had him for a couple of hours and then he had to be handed over to his own people. They flew him out next morning. The really interesting thing proved to be the fifty one-pound notes he'd passed over to Simmons before they were arrested. They were new notes and M.I.6. managed to trace them to a Bond Street bank where a cashier not only recognised Ranevsky's photograph, but also remembered details of the cheque he'd cashed.'

'Are you saying it was one of Donner's?'

Mallory nodded. 'Genuine, too.'

'What did Donner have to say?'

'He wasn't asked anything, Paul. That side of things was never mentioned at Simmons's trial. It wasn't worth wasting on such an insignificant event. They simply dropped the whole thing fairly and squarely into my lap and told me to get on with it.'

'And you've been checking on Donner ever since?'

'That's right and the deeper we probe, the unhealthier it looks. From Burgess and Maclean onwards, everywhere we dig, we seem to find Max Donner hovering on the outer perimeter of things. And not only here. France, Germany, Canada-he has business interests all over the place.'

'But Donner's a highly successful business man, a respected public figure?' Chavasse shook his head. 'What would he stand to gain? It just doesn't make sense.'

'Neither did the Gordon Lonsdale affair at first.'

'But Lonsdale was a Russian, a professional agent.'

'Who was a Canadian to all intents and purposes. Even now there is some doubt about his real name.'

'Are you suggesting that Max Donner might be another Lonsdale?'

'I'm not sure,' Mallory said. 'It's a possibility: that's all we can say for certain at the moment. Donner's parents were Austrian. He was born in Vienna in 1916 while his father was fighting on the Italian front. After the war, things were difficult and then his father came into a small legacy and they emigrated to Australia in 1925.'

'How did they fetch up in a place like Rum Jungle?'

'Like plenty before him, Donner's father fell into the wrong hands. With what was left of his legacy he bought what he understood to be a thriving cattle station. When they got there, they found a mud hole in the wilderness, a broken down shack and a handful of starving cows. Mrs. Donner wasn't built for that kind of life. She died in 1930.'

'When the boy was fourteen?'

'That's right. He and his father hung on for another year, then sold out for seventy-five pounds and left.'

'Where for-Sydney?'

'With a depression just beginning?' Mallory shook his head. 'They took to the road in the Outback following that great Australian custom like thousands of others. Donner's father died in 1933 at a place called Clay Crossing. We know that from the death certificate.'

'When the boy was seventeen?'

Mallory nodded. 'From then on, he was on his own. Just another swagman walking the Outback at a time when half the men in the country were out of work. He joined the army in Kalgoorlie the day after war was declared.'

'And you don't know what happened in between?'

Mallory shook his head. 'From the death of his father at Clay Crossing in 1933 to his enlistment in the army in 1939-a great big blank and I don't like it.'

'And what's he up to at this end?'

'I'm not sure, that's the trouble, but I could make a reasonable guess. For the past couple of years, we've been losing people in a steady trickle. People like Simmons. Not all that important, but important enough. Confidential clerks engaged on classified work, cypher clerks and so on. Thirty-eight in all.'

'Too many,' Chavasse said. 'Only a really efficient organisation could tackle such a number.'

'And an organisation that never misses. This is really classified information, Paul, but twice during the same period, we've been about to arrest a really big fish. In each case he's been spirited away.'

'Forty in all,' Chavasse said. 'That's really very good.'

'Add to those, eleven poor devils who having defected to this country and having applied for and been granted, political asylum, have also completely disappeared. And they've turned up again on the other side, by the way.'

'You're sure about that?'

'Certain. As a matter of fact we've just lost another this week. A rocket expert called Boris Souvorin. Even our American friends didn't know we had him.'

'And you think Donner's behind all this?'

'I'm certain of it. He's been hovering on the fringe in too many cases for my peace of mind.'

'Couldn't you pull him in?'

'On what charge?'

'What about that bearer cheque of his that Ranevsky cashed? Wouldn't that do for a start?'

'Not a chance.' Mallory shook his head. 'Everything would depend upon the bank clerk's evidence that the cheque Ranevsky cashed was Donner's. He wouldn't last ten minutes on the witness stand with a really good counsel having a go at him. Everything else is merely supposition and guesswork.'

'Which you happen to believe?'

'I've never been more certain of anything in my life.'

'Then what are you doing about it?'

Mallory applied another match to the bowl of his pipe. 'How well do you know North-West Scotland and the Hebrides?'

'I went for a climbing holiday in Skye when I was seventeen. I don't think I've ever been back. Why-is it important?'

'There's a place called Moidart on the north-west coast between Loch Shiel and the sea. About a hundred and twenty square miles of mountain and moorland, very sparsely inhabited. A wild, lonely place. Donner bought a house and ten thousand acres of deer forest up there about eighteen months ago.'

'Did he now,' Chavasse said. 'And why would a fun-loving boy like Max Donner suddenly take to the highlands like that? I thought Cap d'Antibes was his stamping ground.'

'So did I.'

'Is there anything in particular he could be after up there?'

'I don't think so.'

Mallory took a map of Scotland from a drawer in his desk and unrolled it. 'There's the atomic submarine base at Holy Loch, of course, and various missile testing ranges in the Outer Hebrides. At Lewis, for instance and South Uist and here at Fhada, south of Barra.'

'Any research work going on there?'

'Not within the meaning of the term, although there's some very interesting stuff being handled. We aren't quite the laggards in the rocket business that some people would like to imagine. No, the places I've mentioned are mainly used for personnel training and test firing. The training part is one of our NATO commitments and very important. Of course the French don't come any more, but we regularly train personnel from German army guided missile regiments.'

'I'd have thought there would be plenty there to interest Donner?'

Mallory shook his head. 'He wouldn't get within smelling distance of one of these places. Civilians aren't even allowed to land and as regards seeing the damned things go up …' He shrugged. 'Plenty of foreign trawlers, Russian and otherwise, fish those waters.'

'Then what's he doing there?'

Mallory tapped a finger on the map. 'There's Moidart and there's Donner's estate, Glenmore, a bare half mile from the sea. As I've already said, a wild, lonely place with few people about. A trawler, or even a submarine, could run in close most nights without being observed.'

'So you think that's the other end of his pipeline?'